O. Marchart on Refresh

[abroeck@v2.nl (Andreas Broeckmann)]

from: Final Debate of Metaforum III: 'Under Construction'
The Budapest Content Conference, October 13, 1996

Oliver Marchart: I would like to reconnect the most impressive
presentations of today, not the speeches but the ones about net.art,
with the economic theories. I did not even know that I had an economic
theory until this afternoon. Suddenly, it came to me as a surprise and
a revelation that capitalism is exactly the same as art criticism. I
agree with Manuel that there is not such a thing as Capitalism. There
are Capitalisms. Even on the Internet you can find many Capitalisms.
There is this Post-Fordist flow of financial capital and early
Capitalism existing at the same time. At the end of the day, the
common denominator of all these forms of Capitalism comes down to one
single question: How to turn crap into gold. We know from what Rachel
said this morning, that 99% of net.art is crap. But this does not
count for art on the Internet only. In museums and galleries it is the
same. As soon as art enters the museum it has been turned into gold by
the work of art critics and curators. What is now going on, concerning
net.art, is a kind of transformation into gold, not done by art
critics but by Capitalists. We do not need art critics to see that
Olia Lialina's Cinemafantom or the Refresh project works. Vuk's
question, 'What will happen with projects that indeed work?', is
highly important. What would happen if you would sell such a work to a
web journal for an amount of money far less than a normal article
would get? What kind of Capitalism is this? It is a commodification of
labour in the form of exploitation, to use an old-fashioned word. A
strategy would be to find some form of organisation among artists
about how to proceed in these cases. Or to produce something like
Refresh. This art form is difficult to be buy and sell because it is
located on different servers. It is charming and has an appeal because
everybody wants to be part of it. This is not about content but about
a form of communication, about linking. It relies solely on
connections.

[...]

Transcribed and edited by Geert Lovink and Thomas Bass





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