“The Occupied Museum” in Artleaks Gazette

2014

 

Artleaks Gazette, the yearly magazine of the international art organizing site Artleaks has published an essay which finds new connections in my artistic/poltical practice of the last years from Occupy Museums through GULF. Comments on the 7th Berlin Biennale by Artur Zmijewski.

You can read the Gazette here

PDF of article here

“What happens when a political art practice collides with a global movement? My answer is Occupy Museums, initiated in the most optimistic moment of Liberty Square and still developing as a movement-affiliated practice long after the tents were banished from public space. Like the OWS movement in general, Occupy Museums (OM) challenges the structures and languages of economic inequality in a highly visible cultural arena. This depends on rewiring embedded social assumptions such as contemporary art’s default to luxury asset and a widespread obedience to the professional aura of Neoliberal institutions. OM is therefore a march from the conventions of the artworld toward a revolutionary mode. Yet conversely, we’ve sometimes managed to complicate and refine OWS-style protest aesthetics and tactics to an art form.”