Marx After Duchamp - Boris Groys

7/29/2019 Marx After Duchamp - Boris Groys

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Boris Groys

Marx AfterDuchamp, or

The ArtistÕs TwoBodies

At the turn of the twentieth century, art entered anew era of artistic mass production. Whereas theprevious age was an era of artistic massconsumption, in our present timethe situationhas changed, and there are two primarydevelopments that have led to this change. Thefirst is the emergence of new technical means forproducingand distributing images, and thesecond is a shift in our understanding of art, a

change in the rules we use for identifying what isand what is not art.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊLet us begin with the second development.Today, we do not identify an artwork primarily asan object produced by the manual work of anindividual artist in such a way that the traces ofthis work remain visible or, at least, identifiablein the body of the artwork itself. During thenineteenth century, painting and sculpture wereseen as extensions of the artistÕs body, asevoking the presence of this body even followingthe artistÕs death. In this sense, artistÕs work was

not regarded as ÒalienatedÓ work Ð in contrast tothe alienated, industrial labor that does notpresuppose any traceable connection betweenthe producerÕs body and the industrial product.Since at least Duchamp and his use of thereadymade, this situation has changeddrastically. And the main change lies not so muchin the presentation of industrially producedobjects as artworks, as in a new possibility thatopened for the artist, to not only produceartworks in an alienated, quasi-industrialmanner, but also to allow these artworks tomaintain an appearance of being industriallyproduced. And it is here that artists as differentas Andy Warhol and Donald Judd can serve asexamples of post-Duchampian art. The directconnection between the body of the artist andthe body of the artworks was severed. Theartworks were no longer considered to maintainthe warmth of the artistÕs body, even when theartistÕs own corpse became cold. On the contrary,the author (artist) was already proclaimed deadduring his or her lifetime, and the ÒorganicÓcharacter of the artwork was interpreted as anideological illusion. As a consequence, while we

assume the violent dismemberment of a living,organic body to be a crime, the fragmentation ofan artwork that is already a corpse Ð or, evenbetter, an industrially produced object ormachine Ð does not constitute a crime; rather, itis welcome.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAnd that is precisely what hundreds ofmillions of people around the world do every dayin the context of contemporary media. Asmasses of people have become well informedabout advanced art production throughbiennials, triennials, Documentas, and related

coverage, they have come to use media in thesame way as artists. Contemporary means of

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communication and social networks such asFacebook, YouTube, and Twitter offer globalpopulations the ability to present their photos,videos, and texts in ways that cannot bedistinguished from any post-Conceptualistartwork. And contemporary design offers thesame populations a means of shaping andexperiencing their apartments or workplaces asartistic installations. At the same time, the

digital ÒcontentÓ or ÒproductsÓ that thesemillions of people present each day has no directrelation to their bodies; it is as ÒalienatedÓ fromthem as any other contemporary artwork, andthis means that it can be easily fragmented andreused in different contexts. And indeed,sampling by way of Òcopy and pasteÓ is the moststandard, most widespread practice on theinternet. And it is here that one finds a directconnection between the quasi-industrialpractices of post-Duchampian art andcontemporary practices used on the internet Ð a

place where even those who do not know orappreciate contemporary artistic installations,performances, or environments will employ thesame forms of sampling on which those artpractices are based. (And here we find ananalogy to BenjaminÕs interpretation of thepublicÕs readiness to accept montage in cinemaas having been expressed by a rejection of thesame approach in painting).

Guided tour at Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York, 1966.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊNow, many have considered this erasure ofwork in and through contemporary artisticpractice to have been a liberation from work ingeneral. The artist becomes a bearer andprotagonist of Òideas,Ó Òconcepts,Ó or Òprojects,Órather than a subject of hard work, whetheralienated or non-alienated work. Accordingly, thedigitalized, virtual space of the internet has

produced phantom concepts of ÒimmaterialworkÓ and Òimmaterial workersÓ that have

allegedly opened the way to a Òpost-FordistÓsociety of universal creativity free from hardwork and exploitation. In addition to this, theDuchampian readymade strategy seems toundermine the rights of intellectual privateproperty Ð abolishing the privilege of authorshipand delivering art and culture to unrestrictedpublic use. DuchampÕs use of readymades can beunderstood as a revolution in art that is

analogous to a communist revolution in politics.Both revolutions aim at the confiscation andcollectivization of private property, whetherÒrealÓ or symbolic. And in this sense one can saythat certain contemporary art and internetpractices now play the role of (symbolic)communist collectivizations in the midst of acapitalist economy. One finds a situationreminiscent of Romantic art at the beginning ofthe nineteenth century in Europe, whenideological reactions and political restorationsdominated political life. Following the French

Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, Europearrived at a period of relative stability and peacein which the age of political transformation andideological conflict seemed to have finally beenovercome. The homogeneous political andeconomic order based on economic growth,technological progress, and political stagnationseemed to announce the end of history, and theRomantic artistic movement that emergedthroughout the European continent became onein which utopias were dreamed, revolutionarytraumas were remembered, and alternative waysof living were proposed. Today, the art scene hasbecome a place of emancipatory projects,participatory practices, and radical politicalattitudes, but also a place in which the socialcatastrophes and disappointments of therevolutionary twentieth century are remembered.And the specific neo-Romantic and neo-communist makeup of contemporary culture is,as is often the case, especially well diagnosed byits enemies. Thus Jaron LanierÕs influential bookYou Are Not a Gadget speaks about the ÒdigitalMaoismÓ and Òhive mindÓ that dominatecontemporary virtual space, ruining the principle

of intellectual private property and ultimatelylowering the standards and leading to thepotential demise of culture as such.1

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThus what we have here does not concernthe liberation of labor, but rather the liberationfrom labor Ð at least from its manual,ÒoppressiveÓ aspects. But to what degree is sucha project realistic? Is liberation from labor evenpossible? Indeed, contemporary art confrontsthe traditional Marxist theory of value productionwith a difficult question: if the ÒoriginalÓ value ofa product reflects the accumulation of work in

this product, then how can a readymade acquireadditional value as an artwork Ð notwithstanding

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Marina Abramović and Ulay,Imponderabilia , 1977,

performance, 90 min., GalleriaCommunale d'Arte ModernaBologna, © Marina Abramović.Courtesy of Sean Kelly Gallery,New York.

the fact that the artist does not seem to haveinvested any additional work in it? It is in thissense that the post-Duchampian conception ofart beyond labor seems to constitute the mosteffective counter-example to the Marxist theoryof value Ð as an example of Òpure,Ó ÒimmaterialÓcreativity that transcends all traditionalconceptions of value production as resultingfrom manual labor. It seems that, in this case,

the artistÕs decision to offer a certain object asan artwork, and an art institutionÕs decision toaccept this object as an artwork, suffice toproduce a valuable art commodity Ð withoutinvolving any manual labor. And the expansion ofthis seemingly immaterial art practice into thewhole economy by means of the internet hasproduced the illusion that a post-Duchampianliberation from labor through ÒimmaterialÓcreativity Ð and not the Marxist liberation oflabor Ð opens the way to a new utopia of creativemultitudes. The only necessary precondition for

this opening, however, seems to be a critique ofinstitutions that contain and frustrate thecreativity of floating multitudes through theirpolitics of selective inclusion and exclusion.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊHowever, here we must deal with a certainconfusion with respect to the notion of Òtheinstitution.Ó Especially within the framework of

Òinstitutional critique,Ó art institutions aremostly considered to be power structuresdefining what is included or excluded from publicview. Thus art institutions are analyzed mostly inÒidealist,Ó non-materialist terms, whereas, inmaterialist terms, art institutions presentthemselves rather as buildings, spaces, storagefacilities, and so forth, requiring an amount ofmanual work in order to be built, maintained, and

used. So one can say that the rejection of Ònon-alienatedÓ work has placed the post-Duchampian artist back in the position of usingalienated, manual work to transfer certainmaterial objects from the outside of art spacesto the inside, or vice versa. The pure immaterialcreativity reveals itself here as pure fiction, asthe old-fashioned, non-alienated artistic work ismerely substituted by the alienated, manualwork of transporting objects. And post-Duchampian art-beyond-labor reveals itself, infact, as the triumph of alienated ÒabstractÓ labor

over non-alienated ÒcreativeÓ work. It is thisalienated labor of transporting objects combinedwith the labor invested in the construction andmaintenance of art spaces that ultimatelyproduces artistic value under the conditions ofpost-Duchampian art. The Duchampianrevolution leads not to the liberation of the artist

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from work, but to his or her proletarization viaalienated construction and transportation work.In fact, contemporary art institutions no longerneed an artist as a traditional producer. Rather,today the artist is more often hired for a certainperiod of time as a worker to realize this or thatinstitutional project. On the other hand,commercially successful artists such as JeffKoons and Damien Hirst long ago converted

themselves into entrepreneurs.

Jeff Koons' design for collector Dakis JoannouÕs personal yacht.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe economy of the internet demonstratesthis economy of post-Duchampian art even foran external spectator. The internet is in fact nomore than a modified telephone network, ameans of transporting electric signals. As such,it is not Òimmaterial,Ó but thoroughly material. Ifcertain communication lines are not laid, ifcertain gadgets are not produced, or if telephoneaccess is not installed and paid, then there issimply no internet and no virtual space. To usetraditional Marxist terms, one can say that thebig communication and information technologycorporations control the material basis of theinternet and the means of producing of virtualreality: its hardware. In this way, the internetprovides us with an interesting combination ofcapitalist hardware and communist software.Hundreds of millions of so-called ÒcontentproducersÓ place their content on the internetwithout receiving any compensation, with thecontent produced not so much by the intellectualwork of generating ideas as by the manual labor

of operating the keyboard. And the profits areappropriated by the corporations controlling thematerial means of virtual production.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe decisive step in the proletarization andexploitation of intellectual and artistic workcame, of course, in the emergence of Google.GoogleÕs search engine operates by fragmentingindividual texts into a non-differentiated mass ofverbal garbage: each individual text traditionallyheld together by its authorÕs intention isdissolved, with individual sentences then fishedout and recombined with other floating

sentences allegedly having the same Òtopic.Ó Ofcourse, the unifying power of authorial intention

had already been undermined in recentphilosophy, most notably by Derrideandeconstruction. And indeed, this deconstructionalready effectuated a symbolic confiscation andcollectivization of individual texts, removingthem from authorial control and delivering theminto the bottomless garbage pit of anonymous,subjectless Òwriting.Ó It was a gesture thatinitially appeared emancipatory for being

somehow synchronized with certain communist,collectivist dreams. Yet while Google nowrealizes the deconstructionist program ofcollectivizing writing, it seems to do little else.There is, however, a difference betweendeconstruction and googling: deconstructionwas understood by Derrida in purely ÒidealisticÓterms as an infinite, and thus uncontrollablepractice, whereas GoogleÕs search algorithms arenot infinite, but finite and material Ð subjected tocorporate appropriation, control, andmanipulation. The removal of authorial,

intentional, ideological control over writing hasnot led to its liberation. Rather, in the context ofthe internet, writing has become subject to adifferent kind of control through hardware andcorporate software, through the materialconditions of the production and distribution ofwriting. In other words, by completely eliminatingthe possibility of artistic, cultural work asauthorial, non-alienated work, the internetcompletes the process of proletarizing work thatbegan in the nineteenth century. The artist herebecomes an alienated worker no different thanany other in contemporary production processes.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊBut then a question arises. What happenedto the artistÕs body when the labor of artproduction became alienated labor? The answeris simple: the artistÕs body itself became areadymade. Foucault has already drawn ourattention to the fact that alienated workproduces the workerÕs body alongside theindustrial products; the workerÕs body isdisciplined and simultaneously exposed toexternal surveillance, a phenomenon famouslycharacterized by Foucault as Òpanopticism.Ó2 Asa result, this alienated industrial work cannot be

understood solely in terms of its externalproductivity Ð it must necessarily take intoaccount the fact that this work also produces theworkerÕs own body as a reliable gadget, as anÒobjectifiedÓ instrument of alienated,industrialized work. And this can even be seen asthe main achievement of modernity, as thesemodernized bodies now populate contemporarybureaucratic, administrative, and cultural spacesin which seemingly nothing material is producedbeyond these bodies themselves. One can nowargue that it is precisely this modernized,

updated working body that contemporary artuses as a readymade. However, the

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contemporary artist does not need to enter afactory or administrative office to find such abody. Under the current conditions of alienatedartistic work, the artist will find such a body toalready be his or her own.

Gillian Wearing, Everything in lifeÉ, 1992-1993, from the series Signsthat say what you want them to say and not signs that say whatsomeone else wants you to say , color coupler prints.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIndeed, in performance art, video,photography, and so forth, the artistÕs bodyincreasingly became the focus of contemporary

art in recent decades. And one can say that theartist today has become increasingly concernedwith the exposure of his or her body as a workingbody Ð through the gaze of a spectator or acamera that recreates the panoptic exposure towhich working bodies in a factory or office aresubmitted. An example of the exposure of such aworking body can be found in MarinaAbramovićÕs exhibition ÒThe Artist Is PresentÓ at

MoMA in New York in 2010. Each day of theexhibition, Abramović sat throughout the

working hours of the museum in MoMAÕs atrium,

maintaining the same pose. In this way,Abramović recreated the situation of an office

worker whose primary occupation is to sit at thesame place each day to be observed by his or hersuperiors, regardless of what is done beyondthat. And we can say that AbramovićÕs

performance was a perfect illustration ofFoucaultÕs notion that the production of theworking body is the main effect of modernized,alienated work. Precisely by not activelyperforming any tasks throughout the time she

was present, Abramović thematized theincredible discipline, endurance, and physicaleffort required to simply remain present at aworkplace from the beginning of the working dayto its end. At the same time, AbramovićÕs body

was subjected to the same regime of exposure asall of MoMAÕs artworks Ð hanging on the walls orstaying in their places throughout the workinghours of the museum. And just as we generallyassume that these paintings and sculptures donot change places or disappear when they arenot exposed to the visitorÕs gaze or when the

museum is closed, we tend to imagine thatAbramovićÕs immobilized body will remain

forever in the museum, immortalized alongsidethe museumÕs other works. In this sense, ÒTheArtist Is PresentÓ creates an image of a livingcorpse as the only perspective on immortalitythat our civilization is capable of offering itscitizens.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe effect of immortality is onlystrengthened by the fact that this performance isa recreation/repetition of a performanceAbramović did with Ulay in her younger years, in

which they sat opposite each other throughoutthe working hours of an exhibition space. In ÒTheArtist Is Present,Ó UlayÕs place oppositeAbramović could be taken by any visitor. This

substitution demonstrated how the working bodyof the artist disconnects Ð through the alienated,ÒabstractÓ character of modern work Ð from hisor her own natural, mortal body. The workingbody of the artist can be substituted with anyother body that is ready and able to perform thesame work of self-exposure. Thus, in the main,retrospective part of the exhibition, the earlierperformances by Marina and Ulay were

repeated/reproduced in two different forms:through video documentation and through thenaked bodies of hired actors. Here again thenakedness of these bodies was more importantthan their particular shape, or even their gender(in one instance, due to practical considerations,Ulay was represented by a woman). There aremany who speak about the spectacular nature ofcontemporary art. But in a certain sense,contemporary art effectuates the reversal of thespectacle found in theater or cinema, amongother examples. In the theater, the actorÕs body

also presents itself as immortal as it passesthrough various metamorphic processes,

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transforming itself into the bodies of others as itplays different roles. In contemporary art, theworking body of the artist, on the contrary,accumulates different roles (as in the case ofCindy Sherman), or, as with Abramović, different

living bodies. The artistÕs working body issimultaneously self-identical andinterchangeable because it is a body ofalienated, abstract labor. In his famous book The

KingÕs Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval PoliticalTheology , Ernst Kantorowicz illustrates thehistorical problem posed by the figure of the kingassuming two bodies simultaneously: onenatural, mortal body, and another official,institutional, exchangeable, immortal body.Analogously, one can say that when the artistexposes his or her body, it is the second, workingbody that becomes exposed. And at the momentof this exposure, this working body also revealsthe value of labor accumulated in the artinstitution (according to Kantorowicz, medieval

historians have spoken of ÒcorporationsÓ).3

Ingeneral, when visiting a museum, we do notrealize the amount of work necessary to keeppaintings hanging on walls or statues in theirplaces. But this effort becomes immediatelyvisible when a visitor is confronted withAbramovićÕs body; the invisible physical effort of

keeping the human body in the same position fora long time produces a ÒthingÓ Ð a readymade Ðthat arrests the attention of visitors and allowsthem to contemplate AbramovićÕs body for hours.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊOne may think that only the working bodiesof contemporary celebrities are exposed to thepublic gaze. However, even the most average,ÒnormalÓ everyday people now permanentlydocument their own working bodies by means ofphotography, video, websites, and so forth. Andon top of that, contemporary everyday life isexposed not only to institutional surveillance,but also to a constantly expanding sphere ofmedia coverage. Innumerable sitcoms inundatingtelevision screens around the world expose us tothe working bodies of doctors, peasants,fishermen, presidents, movie stars, factoryworkers, mafia killers, gravediggers, and even to

zombies and vampires. It is precisely thisubiquity and universality of the working body andits representation that makes it especiallyinteresting for art. Even if the primary, naturalbodies of our contemporaries are different, andtheir secondary working bodies areinterchangeable. And it is precisely thisinterchangeability that unites the artist with hisor her audience. The artist today shares art withthe public just as he or she once shared it withreligion or politics. To be an artist has ceased tobe an exclusive fate; instead, it has become

characteristic of society as a whole on its mostintimate, everyday, bodily level. And here the

artist finds another opportunity to advance auniversalist claim Ð as an insight into theduplicity and ambiguity of the artistÕs own twobodies.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ×

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Boris Groys (1947, East Berlin) is Professor ofAesthetics, Art History, and Media Theory at theCenter for Art and Media Karlsruhe and GlobalDistinguished Professor at New York University. He isthe author of many books, including The Total Art of

Stalinism, Ilya Kabakov: The Man Who Flew into Space

from His Apartment, Art Power , The Communist

Postscript, and, most recently, Going Public.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ1See Jaron Lanier, You Are Not aGadget: A Manifesto (New York:Alfred A. Knopf, 2010).

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ2See Michel Foucault, Discipline& Punish: The Birth of the Prison(New York: Vintage, 1995).

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ3Ernst H Kantorowicz, The KingÕsTwo Bodies: A Study in MediaevalPolitical Theology (Princeton:

Princeton University Press,1997), 3.

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Marx After Duchamp - Boris Groys

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