I am for an Art... (after Claes Oldenburg)
Carey Young
2006

I am for an art that is political, that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum.
I am for an art that considers institutional critique within an increasingly neoliberal context, in which the public functions of the state are becoming outsourced to private enterprise.
I am for an art that looks for critical distance by going deep inside the structures of contemporary business and law.
I am for an art that observes how art is used to sell everything else.
I am for corporate-mantra-as-political-propaganda-as-self-hypnosis art. Art that wears a suit as camouflage.
I am for an art that features Che Guevara lip balm (strawberry flavour.)
I am for an art made from a rolodex, a contract, or a promissory note.
I am for an art that does not aspire to be a cure for alienated humanity.
I am for an art that would rather get ideas from the boardroom than the supermarket.
I am for an art which diverts corporate tools from  their original purpose and shows how they can be put to other kinds of use.
I am for art which does not intend to be activism.
I am for an art that observes the human desire for revolution, but which is not nostalgic.
I am for art that uses law as its medium.
I am for an art which makes you complicit with me.
I am for an art that operates like software.
I am for an art that you can keep in your wallet.
I am for an art that can make you laugh, despite yourself.
I am for a performative, kinetic kind of art which offers training (such as negotiation skills) as a way of altering motion within a system.
I am for an art that does not believe it has the moral high ground.
I am for the kind of art that writes a love poem as a computer virus and then circulates the code.
I am for an art that repels and seduces.
I am for art that succeeds long-term in evading the marketplace.
I am for art that stages a disappearing act.

Artist’s statement produced for publication documenting the ' The New Administration of Aesthetics' conference, Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, 2006

© Carey Young, 2006

 

 

 

 

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