Berlin Wire

Page 75/ May 2013 THE BERLIN WIRE Marsha Bradield & Kuba Szreder (members of Critical Practice) Intro Our case study is a story about institutional inertia in the arts. It considers Critical Practice Research Cluster’s (CP) failed attempt to transform the socio-economic mechanisms prompted by and organizing the seventh Berlin Biennale (BB7). CP is comprised of artists, designers, academics and others and is associated with Chelsea College of Art and Design (London UK). he Cluster explores the conditions and possibilities of cultural production, including itself as an instance of contemporary collaborative praxis. CP embodies this self-relexively via modes of self-governance and forms of self-organization marked by transparency, open access and pragmatic practice. In keeping with these concerns, the Cluster’s proposal to BB7 sought to formulate micro-transformations of the Biennale’s apparatus, attending in particular to its socio-economic aspects: the ways in which BB7 managed both the people and/or resources it brought together. Titled “Critical Economic Practice” (CEP for short), this project sought to relexively explore BB7’s controversial curatorial agenda focused on the “results of art”. If this agenda aimed to move art beyond empty gestures caught in the art world’s symbolic economy and task it with realizing real-world results, CEP aimed to consider their achievement through “the apparatus of contemporary art”: the aggregate of practices, mechanisms, resources, energies, desires, agendas, strategies and tactics that motors the ongoing reproduction of art as a ield of cultural activity composed of artists, curators, artworks, audiences, institutions and other actors. In contrast to the glut of critique on BB7 as an art world extravaganza, what follows is closer to a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the Biennial’s apparatus. We draw on CP’s experience of negotiating this apparatus while considering general, even perennial questions about the organizational mechanisms composing “the institution of art,” to use Peter Bürger’s notion.1 We frame CP’s application as a kind of “crash test” to highlight one of its notable results: our proposal failed to overcome institutional inertia, despite the curators of BB7 expressing interest in CEP’s realization. It is important to note that despite CEP being excluded from BB7, the project is ongoing. It will evolve in response to other organizational circumstances and institutional speciicity with the aim of positively transforming the apparatus Page 76/ May 2013 of contemporary art in general. he agents of CEP are also in lux. he “we” of this text refers to its immediate authors who, as members of CP, are evolving CEP on behalf of the Cluster. Additionally, Metod Blejec, Cinzia Cremona, Neil Cummings, Karem Ibrahim, Scott Schwager and other members of CP have contributed to CEP directly and indirectly over the course of its development. Others are sure to shape the project in future. Prologue CP’s proposal to BB7 developed through negotiations with the curators and organizers, mainly Artur Żmijewski (AŻ), Joanna Warsza and Zdravka Bajović. his dialogue began in 2011 when we met with AŻ on 15.01.11 after the symposium, “Art: What is the Use?” at Whitechapel Gallery in London, where he made a presentation. here was a serendipitous connection between the symposium’s preoccupation with art’s utilitarian value and AŻ’s growing interest in its concrete outcomes. We discussed CP’s practice, ethos and projects with AŻ and he invited the Cluster to develop a proposal as a response to BB7’s theme. In an email 24.01.2011, AŻ clariied his commitment to engaging artists with the impact of art as well as questions around whose agenda it aims to advance. Is it possible, he wondered, to produce a work of art that has a measurable result? Can artists and/or their practice “create reality” in the same way that politicians sometimes can? Who do artists represent: a community and/or themselves? AŻ was emphatic that only artworks realizing genuine results were relevant to BB7. here was no place for empty gestures in this frame. Intrigued by Biennial’s preoccupation with something akin to art’s use value, CP proposed a “Market of Values” to engage with the subtle and situated economics organising art and other contingent economic circuits: Markets are good at evaluating values, and communicating the results of those evaluations. While the idea of values distributed by competitive markets penetrates all aspects of contemporary life, other kinds of markets and economies exist, even lourish. Our market will be inspired by the ancient agora - a site of economic transaction and a space of political discourse. We will propose, explore and implement various economies and structures of exchange, these might include: a casino, a blood donation bank, an auction, a derivatives market, various currencies, voting systems, gift economies, waste, and many others. Some values and economies might beneit everyone, like a commons (a blood bank, for example) and not just those who are the iercest competitors or start with the largest assets. We imagine a lea-market type assembly of structures, with stalls hosted by artists, economists, academics, activists, ecologists, anthropologists, civil-society groups, pressure groups and others to explore existing evaluative structures and produce new ones. (CP‘s irst proposal, 2010) Page 77/ May 2013 On 30.06.11, Zdravka Bajović of BB7’s curatorial team emailed regarding our proposal. As a playful experiment, the “Market of Values” was ill suited for the Biennial in their view. hey rejected the Market because it insuiciently addressed BB7’s core question “What is the real result of art?”. he Cluster was invited to rework its proposal with this feedback in mind. Critical Economic Practice (CEP) Phase One We decided to revisit the question posed by the curators of BB7 with the scrupulous seriousness that they demanded. Instead of relecting on the results of any singular artistic manifestation (a piece, gesture, performance, object, etc.), we focused on what George Yúdice calls the “reality efects” of the artistic institution.2 He argues that relection on the political results of art should not only concentrate on artworks or projects but also on the institutionalised means of their production. Artistic institutions, asserts Yúdice, produce “reality efects” by providing employment, reinforcing the division of labour, establishing alliances between sectors, strengthening contact among communities, mustering political support, connecting businesses and stimulating local economies in other ways.3 We assumed that BB7 would be no diferent. As an artistic institution it would impact its surroundings to ends that are potentially easier to identify as the “real results of art” than the majority of artistic manifestations produced in the Biennale’s framework. his led us to conclude that grappling with the “real results of art” meant coping with BB7’s “reality efects” as an artistic institution, dispersed across its internal and external economy. Our engagement with the “reality efects” of BB7 was directly inspired by Walter Benjamin’s analysis of the artistic apparatus. In “he Author as Producer” (1934) he writes that the task of the revolutionary author is to “alienate the apparatus of production from the ruling class in favor of socialism, by means of improving it.” 4 he apparatus encompasses the mechanisms of cultural production and dissemination. It is organized through the complex division of artistic labour and the social norms regulating authorship, ownership and the circulation of art objects. Moreover the apparatus inluences artistic subjectivities, molds people’s imaginaries and desires, their perceptions of the self and other. hese conventions are functionally convergent with the economic relations underlying what Harrison and Cynthia White call the “dealer and critic system”.5 Since its emergence in the late nineteenth century, this system has linked artists, critics, dealers and collectors in lows of symbolic and economic capital that create structural conditions for the reproduction of an autonomous art ield. In other words, the artistic apparatus is reciprocally intertwined with the political economy of the art world. While developing our response to the curatorial team’s feedback, we recognized the degree to which our proposal hinged on cooperation from AŻ and his staf. We were encouraged by AŻ’s receptiveness to examining the “results of art” achieved by the Biennial.6 He described its organization on various public occasions (e.g. Page 78/ May 2013 meetings, interviews, public statements) as a radical counterpoint to the typical structuring of similar politicized art exhibitions. Nevertheless, without relexively engaging its own institutional conditions, BB7 ran the risk of being just another art event with a political tendency, streamlining familiar igures to conduct business as usual. Change Begins at Home CEP’s interest in the “results of art” that BB7 might itself realize ties back to CP’s own self-relexive engagement with the forces and counter forces shaping its cultural production. In contrast to the inaccessibility that tends to ring-fence the ield of art, CP aspires to be accessible in two particular ways: anyone can join and the Cluster endeavours to make its process transparent through placing its organisation documents (meeting agenda and minutes as well as research outcomes) in the public domain. Granted, in practice access to CP depends on disposable time, London residency and a willingness to negotiate the iligrees of disparate relations that propel the Cluster’s becoming. he contingency, complexity and complicity that preoccupied CP’s proposal for BB7 sought to grapple with the intractable results of art arising from its simultaneous engagement in multiple economies. At the same time, CEP tracked with proximate research trends. CP’s involvement with the Precarious Workers Brigade and its exposé of labour abuses in the London art scene and beyond shored up the Cluster’s conviction that exploring the “real results of art” entails examining the labour conditions of those most directly efected: arts practitioners. Importantly, this conviction helped us to identify our own process of working with BB7’s curatorial team as a valid subject of investigation. Concomitantly, researching with Free/Slow University of Warsaw into the intersection of sociology and economics in the ield of art seeded CP’s then future and now current research into the disparate values propelling artistic production. In response to this medley of interests, Critical Economic Practice (CEP) was born as a sketch of what CP aimed to realise at BB7. he proposal’s crux was expressed as follows. Critical Economic Practice: C.E.P. by Critical Practice In response to the question central to the Berlin Biennial, “What are the results of art?”, Critical Practice is establishing Critical Economic Practice – C.E.P. his enterprise uses artistic practices to critically modify the social and economic mechanisms of the art ield. he central logic of C.E.P. is that the concrete results of art are located in the traceable outcomes of the social and economic mechanisms regulating the functioning of the art ield. In contrast to vague artistic gestures that are often attributed political impact they do not deliver, C.E.P. demonstrates outcomes by catalyzing, measuring and mapping the interactions that constitute the economies of exchange in the art ield. C.E.P. targets and transforms the structures organizing production, circulation and distribution of Page 79/ May 2013 value in this ield. C.E.P. will extract and reconigure this value through alternative economies that insist on social justice through the insights they produce and practices they model. C.E.P. will ensure that this value is equitably distributed, in keeping with the long-standing avant-gardist commitment to radical democratization and the transformation of social structures. For the Berlin Biennial: C.E.P’s four-step methodology will identify the results of art in the context of the Biennial as follows: (a) Research the Berlin Biennial’s complex economies through a combination of mapping tools, taken from the diferent ields of social sciences, economy, anthropology and participatory performative practices. (b) Propose performative interventions and artistic actions that will transform existing economies and establish alternative models of social, artistic and personal exchange inside the Biennial. heir aim will be to multiply resources by setting up additional revenue streams and provide models for public redistribution of value generated. (c) Embody and operate these mechanisms during the course of the Biennial as both short-term interventions and more durable modiications of existing structures. (d) Display the results through publicly accessible artworks, comprised of archives, diagrams, maps, videos and organizational documents. C.E.P.’s aims include: (a) To research the art ield as comprised of diverse and coextensive economies, exploring how social, cultural, symbolic, economic and other structures converge and accrete value in relation to the labour and resources producing it. (b) To address inequities by modeling alternative economies, operative within dominant structures, for tapping hidden values and/or attribute and redistribute existing ones to more equitable efect. C.E.P. is presently devising working schemes and tactical performances for the Berlin Biennial. C.E.P. is eager to discuss and negotiate them with the Biennial’s curator and managerial team. To ensure the successful execution of its strategies as part of the Berlin Biennial, C.E.P. requests feedback by 30th of August, 2011. CEP Phase Two At irst, CEP was warmly received by BB7’s curatorial team. In a Skype meeting with Zdravka Bajović and Joanna Warsza on 26.09.11, they pledged support for CP’s commitment to realizing practical, action-based outcomes. CEP seemed to strike a chord, chiming with these curators’ own experience of working within the constraints of a large-scale, long-term and publically-funded enterprise. hey agreed that planning and realizing CEP at BB7 should begin with mapping the institution’s apparatus. CP’s aim was to trace BB7’s various economies so as to detail how they function both internally and in relation to the Biennial’s social Page 80/ May 2013 surroundings. he decision was taken that CP should come to Berlin for a research trip in November of 2011 and engage with BB7’s apparatus irst hand. To advance the Cluster and the Biennial’s collaboration, CP agreed to send a list of questions to and about BB7. Emailed on 10.10.11., they sketched areas of mutual interest in line with the Cluster’s ongoing concerns related to organizational structures, budgetary distribution and artistic programming. In keeping with CP’s commitment to organizational transparency, we identiied BB7’s opaqueness as the irst obstacle to be overcome before devising any sensible transformation of the Biennale’s apparatus. Zdravka Bajović pledged to show support for CP’s preliminary research by sending an overview of BB7’s organizational structure. However, this was never forthcoming. Critical Practice’s Questions for BB7 1. General organizational structures - how many people are employed by BB and what are their positions? What is their division of labour and responsibilities? Is there an organizational diagram which show this? - how many people work on permanent, temporary, intern and volunteer contracts? could we have copies of the diferent contracts? - how many interns does BB employ and how many of them are paid? - what is the ratio of artists to administrators in BB? 2. Budget - what is the BB’s total budget? Could we have a breakdown of its diferent aspects? - what are the main sources of revenue (i.e. public funding, ticket sales, sales of rights and publications, sponsorship, etc.) and how much income do they generate? - what are the main expenditures (i.e. infrastructure, core team, artistic program, copyrights, insurance, public relations, etc.) and how much do they cost? - what kind of arrangements are in place for private sponsorship? (i.e. barter of services, inancial inputs, etc.) - do you have any studies of the economic impact of the BB on Berlin (i.e. through tourism)? - as the BB accepts public monies, in what ways does it need to be accountable for this funding? What is the ‘social contract’ implicit or explicit in this acceptance of public monies? 3. Artistic program - do you have any data on the social proile of participating artists? (i.e. gender, country of origin, age groups, country of residence) - do you have any data on the economic proile of participating artists? (i.e. how many of them are represented and take an active part in the art market? how many work in the public sector? how many subsidize their works from other sources?) - what are the contractual agreements with artists for new commissions? (i.e. are artists paid honoraries? are the commissions copyrighted? who keeps the rights for their distribution and sale? in the case of commissions entering the art market - are any portions of sales returned to BB?) - what are the contractual arrangements with regard to exhibiting existing works? (i.e. is BB renting Page 81/ May 2013 them or getting them for free? who is paid in case of renting - owners / collectors or authors?) - what is the relation between BB and Berlin artistic scene? how many local artists are exhibited? what are the links with local partners / initiatives? what is the BB’s relationship with parallel or satellite events? how many of them are involved in programming? do they receive any inancial support from Biennial? 4. Audience proile - how many visitors come to BB? do you have any speciic information on the social proile of visitors? were there any marketing / audience surveys conducted in recent years? how many people pay for regular / reduced tickets, receive free accreditations (for press, professionals, etc.)? - What does the VIP program of BB look like? What kind of privileged access / services are on ofer? How many guests use these services? Are they charged specially for these services? What is the social proile of guests (i.e. collectors, politicians, directors, intellectuals, etc.)? 5. Information policy - of the above requested information, what is publically disclosed, and on how regular a basis? - are publications and works of art produced by BB copyrighted (with limited access) or put in the public domain (with public access)? CEP Phase hree At this stage and from the Biennial’s perspective, it seemed the main obstacles to realizing CEP were the project’s feasibility and signiicance. According to AŻ in an email from 12.10.11, CP’s proposal failed to manifest explicit mechanisms for achieving “real world results” of art. At the same time, AŻ seemed anxious that CEP would be a mere research project. Because his curatorial agenda hinged on “inding answers and not asking questions”7 he was reluctant to support anything abstract by dint of being exploratory. We were astonished by AŻ’s response and all the more so in light of his sense, expressed in an email of 12.10.11, that a core problem facing contemporary art practice is systemic anxiety. Eventually the Biennale was subtitled “Forget Fear,” highlighting AŻ’s sense that it is fear above all else that deadlocks the management of institutions and intimidates artists and curators alike. CEP aimed to explore these types of conundrums. We emailed AŻ to this efect insisting that the project’s concrete mechanisms would evolve in situ and in response to BB7’s apparatus. As we made the point in our correspondence on 07.10.11: We aim at creating speciic mechanisms for the Biennial, which would be a bit more innovative and context responsive than quite general ideas of taxation or contractual subversion like, for example, redistributing the revenues coming from BB commissions when they are sold on art market, micro taxing the carbon footprint of BB visitors, inventing micro inancing and crowdsourcing schemes for BB audiences, introducing schemes of progressive entry charge in which costs of tickets are dependent on monthly revenue of visitors, etc. Page 82/ May 2013 It is perhaps not surprising that what played out in our subsequent email exchange with AŻ’s and his staf was a case of “chicken and egg”. To support the project and provide access to BB7’s institutional knowledge, the curatorial team required a detailed description of CEP’s intervention. To detail this intervention, CP needed access to BB7’s in-house organization and its ongoing development. A stalemate ensued. CEP Phase Four he “chicken and egg” problem was exacerbated by a game of “cat and mouse”. BB7’s correspondence became increasingly delayed and obfuscated. Obviously the capacity to withhold information is a privilege of power, just as being exposed to the investigative gaze of disciplinary institutions is the fate of the powerless. hen in October of 2011 our negotiations switched format, with email exchanges giving way to face-to-face meetings, informal discussions at parties and other social events. In the end, getting answers to our more probing questions proved impossible. Most of the information we received was basic and already in the public domain, namely that BB7’s budget amounted to 2.5 million Euro. To this AŻ added in a conversation on 3.11.11 that the curators were only in charge of around 20% of the Biennale’s budget. he rest was managed by KW Institute for Contemporary Art, the institution responsible for producing BB7. Based on scraps of information gather through our exchange with BB7’s curators, a rather grim picture emerged of institutional inertia and curatorial impasse. When we met with AŻ on 3.11.11 in Warsaw, he decried responsibility for BB7’s seized apparatus, declaring himself to be victimized by it instead. According to AŻ, even simple artistic productions were met with institutional resistance and curatorial agency was seriously compromised. Rather than evolve the Biennial’s organization, AŻ and his team were expected to fulill their contractual roles and provide programming. BB7 was founded on and could operate only within a clear division of duties, responsibilities and power between managers, curators and artists. AŻ’s agenda relied on the organizational apparatus of KW, trying to redirect it away from maintaining artistic autonomy and towards supporting political change. Yet it seems, based on CP’s experience of working with BB7, that it does not matter whether art is distinguished by its “purposeless purpose” or if it tries to realize social change. he bureaucracies that enable artistic production deine the limits of both art’s autonomy and reformist zeal. In this way, BB7 is not an exception to wider, historical tendencies. It was incumbent on KW to be as eicient as possible with the limited resources at their disposal and ensure that BB7 succeeded as an event. Other interests and ambitions, such as those identiied in CEP, seemed impossible with the Biennial’s institutional immunology shoring up its operational capacity. Anyone wishing to interfere with an institution’s bureaucratic routines should be Page 83/ May 2013 prepared for resistance. he more heated and advanced the event’s production, the more resistant it will be to anything compromising institutional eiciency. Like other institutions, KW was part of an accountability chain. he institution responsible for realizing BB7 was most immediately accountable to its primary stakeholders, especially the German Federal Cultural Foundation, which provides the bulk of KW’s funding. his foundation is in turn accountable to the politicians who support it. And they are in turn accountable to their parties and constituencies. In a statement pertaining to the BB7’s accountability in general, AŻ declared the following: “We [BB7’s curatorial and production team] should not lose sight of our main goal: to open access to performative and efective politics that would equip we ordinary citizens with the tools of action and change. Art is one of these tools”8, with original wording and grammar). What, however, is missing from this statement is any frank acknowledgement that in this particular case, art’s efectiveness as a tool for change was caught up with institutional accountability as accountability between institutions and key stakeholders and not the “ordinary citizens” to which AŻ referred. What is surprising in the case of BB7 is the curatorial team’s failure to acknowledge from the onset this two-fold rub: chaing between curatorial and artistic agency and institutional efectiveness on the one hand, and between formalized and general accountability on the other. Perhaps it was only through actually testing BB7’s bureaucratic mechanisms that they came to appreciate its structural incapacity for change. And perhaps AŻ and his team’s struggle to cope with this “real world efect” of art (institutions), helps to explain why their correspondence with CP was so intermittent. It wasn’t until 27.02.2012, more than a year after our initial meeting with AŻ in London on 15.01.11 and further to several reminder emails, that we had word from BB7’s associate curator Joanna Warsza: the Biennale would not realize CEP. Dearest Marsha, Dearest Kuba, hank you very much for reminder, and sorry for our silence, I know that you have been waiting very long for an answer. We are sorry to say that for various reasons - some of it structural or administrative - we will not be able to realize the project with you. We are overloaded with work and sometimes struggling ourselves with the skepticism towards expanding an art ield. I spoke a bit with Kuba about it... Best and hopefully see you very soon. Joanna Page 84/ May 2013 Epilogue BB7’s failure to realize CEP seems paradigmatic of the “real world efects” of arts institutions crippled by inertia. We conclude this exposé of CP’s dialogue with the Biennial’s curatorial team with several observations, some more common sense than others. It is our hope they may contribute to the critical and progressive practice of art and its institutionalization going forward. he irst observation relates to accountability. As an invited applicant to BB7, CP had no leverage on the Biennale nor exerted any instruments of political pressure. Willingly or not we negotiated from the in-between position of invitees and applicants who were at the Biennial’s disposal. While it was clear that CP’s application was wholly accountable to BB7, it seems that when it came to negotiating CEP, BB7 was far less accountable to CP. Second and closely related are the terms of this negotiation. As exempliied by CEP, applications involve time, energy and other forms of investment in their preparation and assessment as well as their rejigging and negotiation. To be successful, applicants must reveal their project’s signiicance while demonstrating their competence by earnestly and efectively engaging in the application process. How much of an artistic intention should be shared, when and to what ends? In the case of CEP, these questions grew all the more pressing as the project’s likelihood of realization shrank. It was a vexing process, illed with uncertainty. In light of this, our third observation pertains to our complicity in the very system we aim to change. In our current age of dematerialized labour, short termism, rampant collaboration and the spirit of unaccountability that often tracks with privatization, concerns around the appropriation of cultural outcomes and the expropriation of creative labour seem increasingly urgent. We do not mean to suggest that our proposal was appropriated without our participation. And yet we are struck that many of the Biennale’s critical outcomes were located precisely at the intersection of curatorial agency and institutional frameworking, as they followed threads similar to those outlined in CEP. For example, an announcement issued in BERLIN BIENNIAL NEWS 19 (15.06.12) reads as follows: More than halfway into the 7th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, the invited global movements have challenged the hierarchical structure of the Biennale, initiating a move toward horizontality. Horizontality means de-centering power away from leadership hierarchies and making decisions through group consensus. he experiment consists of changing the positions of the curators relative to the Occupy Biennale and calling a series of assemblies with activists and KW staf willing to rethink the terms and conditions of labor.9 Page 85/ May 2013 We read this announcement with mixed emotions. For sure, CEP shares with the OCCUPY Museum and OCCUPY movements many core values. Accountability and the rethinking of labor conditions are political postulates and not authorized notions. And the more they are spoken about, the more pressure is put on making institutional change that beneits us all. So it was not that some of CEP’s ambitions were put into practice at BB7 without CP’s involvement that we found so disappointing. Rather, it was their futility as largely symbolic gestures, the very type that AŻ had emphatically deplored back in January of 2011. his comes onto our next observation, which pertains to the limits of potential transformations. he spectacle of basic democracy in the form of OCCUPY, climaxing just two weeks before the Biennale’s end on July 1, 2012, is a case in point. If OCCUPY erupted with the promise of change, it came too late to impact the Biennale directly. By mid June, the Biennale’s budget had been spent, the contracts were being wound up and the project was largely realized. All that remained was for BB7 to clear its debts and reconcile its failed ambitions. So when it came to transforming the Biennial, OCCUPY was a gesture shot through with capitulation manifest in its emptiness: representation without transformation. Another attempt at transforming BB7’s institution is much more efective and hence inspiring. he curatorial team made some forays into engaging the socioeconomics of the institution’s apparatus when they waved BB7’s entrance fee, a decision announced in the Biennale’s eighth newsletter published on 28.04.2013. What made this an encouraging act is that it proved, beyond any doubt, that where there is political will, a dramatic makeover of the apparatus can be achieved, even in the rush of things. his brings us to our inal observation. he growing collision between contemporaneity and complexity makes the evolution of new modes of cultural production an increasingly urgent concern. OCCUPY is appealing in part because of its NOW factor. Yet this can elide the long and convoluted process required to efect long-term and sustainable change in a world shaped through exponential interdependence. To expect either OCCUPY to revolutionize BB7 or BB7 to revolutionize itself or, the apparatus of art in general, may be unreasonable. But to ignore what this coalition between art and activism has brought to the fore, speciically demands for systemic institutional reform, is unforgivable. We hold fast to the conviction that unless transformation wrestles with the intractable problems that mitigate its very becoming, this transformation will fail. To rebuke AŻ’s anti-intellectual slogan (quoted above) that BB7 was driven by “inding answers and not asking questions,” we insist that moving beyond abstract theory depends on collectively questioning the basis for institutional inertia in the art world and political paralysis in general. To this end and as an exposé of its evolution through BB7, may the foregoing discussion of CEP’s early development be a resource for mapping the apparatus of art, building solidarity amongst practitioners and Page 86/ May 2013 identifying practices that deadlock critical cultural production. Only through engaging this relection, solidarity and cessation can we move beyond dreaming of alternatives and get down to the diicult work of achieving real-world results with a lasting legacy. 1 Peter Bürger, heory of the Avant-Garde (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984). 2 George Yúdice, he Expediency of Culture: Uses of Culture in the Global Era. (Durham, NC; London: Duke University Press, 2005), 311. 3 Ibid., 324-330. 4 Walter Benjamin, “he Author as Producer” [online publication] <http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=135>, accessed 20 Feb. 2011. 5 Harrison C. White and Cynthia A. White, Canvases and Careers: Institutional Change in the French Painting World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 94-98. 6 Artur Żmijewski and Joanna Warsza (eds.), Forget Fear (Cologne: Walther König, 2012a), 7. 7 Artur Żmijewski, “7th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Politics” in Artur Żmijewski and Joanna Warsza (eds.), Act for Art: Berlin Biennale Zeitung (Berlin: KW Institute for Contemporary Art, 2012b), 10. 8 Żmijewski, Op. Cit (2012a), 7. 9 BB7 Challenge, [web document, press release] <http://metropolism.com/fresh-signals/bb7-challenge/english>, accessed 10 Dec. 2012. Marsha Bradield is an artist, curator, writer, educator and researcher. Across these practices, she is developing a praxis of dialogic art. She co-authors events, projects, exhibitions, publications, etc., that use dialogue to explore authorship as constitutively collaborative. Her interdisciplinary approach foregrounds the dialogic interactions among people, objects, cultures, systems, technologies and other aspects as they couple and decouple through cultural production. Marsha received her PhD from Chelsea College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London in 2013. She works in collaboration with ArtLeaks, Critical Practice, Precarious Workers Brigade and Contemporary Marxism Group. Marsha divides her time between London UK and Vancouver Canada. Kuba Szreder is a member of Critical Practice since 2008. Graduate of sociology at Jagiellonian University (Krakow). He works as an independent curator, his interdisciplinary projects actively engage in public sphere, combine artistic practices with other formats of cultural production and critical examination of society. His research is focused on critical relection about artistic apparatus and its position in contemporary capitalism. In Fall 2009 he started his practice-based PhD at Loughborough University School of the Arts, in which he scrutinizes the economic and governmental aspects of project making and their impact on an ‘independent’ curatorial practice.