This post is only in English and gives a shorter version of my German book about "Being artist in capitalism". It is still a pretty long reading....The red numbers are footnotes that you will find at the end of the text.
Looking forward to your comments....
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Ralf Peters
Being (Performance) Artist in Capitalism
This is a collection of thoughts and
considerations concerning the question how to live as an artist in general and
as a performance artist in particular in the current world that is dominated by
the ideology of capitalism. How can we succeed in a globalized capitalist
society to do our artistic work, to hope for some kind of resonance, and to
find the means for a life that offers the space we need for our art – and all
this without becoming a victim of the capitalistic logic? I am not trying to
give any kind of true answer to these
questions but want to offer some material that helps and inspires one´s own
contemplation on these subjects[1].
1.
A few things that
I need to remember from time to time while writing these considerations:
Capitalism is a
mind set from which certain forms of economic activity arise - not the other
way round. The end of neo-liberalism won´t necessarily be the end of the
capitalist age. I focus on the Spirit of
Capitalism, not on the economic consequences, although I keep them in mind.
Trade and monetary
economy are not capitalistic per se, but a necessary part of social life. I as an artist have the right, the
permission, and the duty (?) to earn money!
There are non-capitalist
economic systems.
There are unjust
non-capitalist economic systems (for example ancient Greece or the Roman
Empire, whose economies were based on slavery).
Capitalism and the
idea of the modern artist have arisen from the same source, which may be called
Modernity or Enlightenment and that has started with the Renaissance. Of
course there were people doing art in all traditions and there are types of
artists for instance in China and Japan. But the modern western artist who has been the prototype for the globalized
current artist is a special and unusual phenomenon that we are maybe able to
understand in the context of European history.
2.
There are four regions in which the
question how to live an artistic life in the capitalistic world can be
explored: the first one is the realm of the inner
attitude. How can I adjust my inner situation in a way that prevents me
from falling without any protection into the traps that capitalist spirit has
put around me? On this level of inner attitude most relevant decisions are made
- with strong effects on the other three dimensions. The second is how I organize my artistic work. In which
contexts do I find at the same time support and free space for my work? The
next dimension is the question of economic
survival and some sort of stability in my life that is necessary for
creating art. The fourth dimension relates to the political effects of my work.
3.
In my considerations I refer to the German philosopher Max Scheler who has written some articles about the spirit
of capitalism in 1914[2].
One reason to read these articles today is the perspective that Scheler took in
writing them. He was very critical concerning capitalism but not – like most of
the thinkers of his time – from a socialist or marxist point of view. For
Scheler even Marxism works inside the capitalist logic and is therefor more a
symptom of capitalism than its alternative. Scheler´s own thinking at that time
was based on a catholic basis. Catholic anti-capitalism? This sounds more weird
than it was hundred years ago when there was a catholic movement against
capitalism. The very word catholic in the context of my essay is only used to focus
on a special sort of anti-capitalistic thinking and not as a religious or even
an ecclesiastical feature.
„Capitalism is at first place not an
economic system of distributing possessions but a system covering the whole
spheres of life and culture.“
If we agree with this sentence of
Scheler that today, in times of globalization, has a universal dimension, we
might be able to face the current situation. More or less every human being on
earth is affected and infected by the logic of capitalism, no matter if we
agree with this system or if we try to resist against its dominant power.
The spirit of capitalism for Scheler
has emerged through a historical shift of the general understanding of the world and the motivational structures of
life. The first indications of this shift can be seen in the Middle Ages, then
in the Italian Renaissance, and they
became strong during the epoch of Reformation. To overcome capitalism in our
minds we have to find out how this shift changed our relation to the world, to
ourselves and to life and then we might be able to create a distance to this
spirit.
Artists are one of the few kinds of
people (beside the religious man/woman and the man/woman of nature) who still
have a more or less strong access to the ideas and values that were dominant in
precapitalist societies. In this sense artists might play a role in the process
of overcoming capitalism.
4.
One aspect in which the views of
Scheler and Marx differ is their estimation of work for the self understanding of men and women in modern
societies. For Marx work is the very value that the proletariat can rely on in
his fight for justice in capitalism. This was an important insight at this time
but Scheler claims that Marx with his understanding of work is moving inside
the context of the capitalistic spirit that derived from a protestant point of
view which didn´t exist in catholic thinking. The most important aspect in this
protestant approach is a nearly bizarre overestimation of the value of work for
men and women[3].
What is the difference in the
evaluation of work? For the people in medieval Europe there was no direct link
between work and what we would call spiritual welfare or wellbeing. Work was
there to be done because it was necessary to survive. The question of how to
safe one´s soul at that time was more
or less the job of the church and the
dominant structure of the christian world everybody was integrated in. Medieval
society had a religious background and the order of this world was orientated
in the whole towards a christian idea of spiritual welfare. Work had very
little to do with it.
The only exception was the life of
monks and nuns in monasteries. In their lives work had a higher meaning and was part of a religious practice.
Protestantism made the world to a
monastery – as some writers in Scheler´s time said – and all people became nuns
and monks in the sense that now work had a religious meaning for everybody.
Work suddenly was not only a duty to fullfil but it became a fundamental value
for the human existence. Now men are men (for women the situation at that time
was different) only because he works! Marx somewhere says that working is as
much a human need as swimming is for fishes.
Only through his work men can show their
value to gain eternal life after death. Nowadays the religious context of this
ideology has disappeared but the strange idea of work as a power for the
definition of men and women is still alive. What remained is the idea that work
has to bring some sort of profit for the worker. In Protestantism (Calvin) it
was a better chance to get a place in heaven. Nowadays it is a better financial
situation in the heavens of capitalism.
What is this telling us for the self understanding of artists in capitalism?
What is this telling us for the self understanding of artists in capitalism?
Artists are very often in a kind of
ambivalent relation to work. On the one hand (hard) artistic work is part of
their self image and of their lives. Insofar they are not very far away from
the nuns and monks of the middle ages and of their protestant followers
afterwards. On the other hand artistic work is often not acknowledged as real work by our societies. („Oh you are
an artist! And what do you do during the week?“) Writing books, painting,
singing songs, doing performances – this can´t be work, say most of the
Bourgeois with a 9to5 job.
Art is very often hard work, but hard
work alone is not art yet. Sometimes art needs time to wait, sometimes it is
more like a game, sometimes artists need retreat, sometimes exchange with
others. The idea of work is much too narrow to define or explain artistic
activities.
Maybe it would be helpful to find an understanding of art making that doesn´t need the word work, to prevent it from being trapped into the system of capitalist thinking. This liberation from work will only be successful if we liberate ourselves from the idea that work has anything to do with the value of a human being.
5.
Beside the overestimation of work there
are two other main features of capitalistic logic that Scheler mentions.
One is the quantification of all aspects of human life. Through this
quantification everything becomes a product or article in the context of a
capitalist logic. Everything has a price. Everything becomes part of the
market. The spirit of capitalism changes the general way how we relate to
things in our life. It becomes much harder to develop a deep relationship to
things; but this is a crucial ability for performance artists who need to
create relationships to the material
they work with as deep as to their bodies[4].
The masses of things that we have to
face and/or possess in capitalism, makes it difficult to create a real relation
to these things[5]. Compared with earlier
epochs today things of our daily lives are replaced for new ones very
fast. (The new - as we will see later - is one of Scheler´s infantile ideals of capitalism.) We
change our clothing, smartphones, computers and even our furnishings in a speed
that leaves us breathless. In this way we fulfill our duty as consumers
supporting the capitalistic credo of permanent growth.
You could think that the simplify-your-life-movement that wants to support a clearing out of the environment of our lives is a counter movement against this flood of products that threatens us to be washed ashore. But maybe even this movement supports the capitalistic logic: The idea of a life with light baggage promotes the capitalistic ideal of a human being that doesn´t carry any ballast that would keep him or her from being flexible enough to continue the race inside capitalism. Things you are clinging to make you lazy.
Performance artist in any case build a strong relationship to the things they work with or they create. In this context a thing cannot be a mere product or article but something I - as an artist and as an observer - have to relate to. Staying strong with this idea of understanding things as been connected with meaning and effects on us, performance artists defend a value that threatens to disappear in capitalism in favor of seeing things just as products and material that can be replaced at any time.
You could think that the simplify-your-life-movement that wants to support a clearing out of the environment of our lives is a counter movement against this flood of products that threatens us to be washed ashore. But maybe even this movement supports the capitalistic logic: The idea of a life with light baggage promotes the capitalistic ideal of a human being that doesn´t carry any ballast that would keep him or her from being flexible enough to continue the race inside capitalism. Things you are clinging to make you lazy.
Performance artist in any case build a strong relationship to the things they work with or they create. In this context a thing cannot be a mere product or article but something I - as an artist and as an observer - have to relate to. Staying strong with this idea of understanding things as been connected with meaning and effects on us, performance artists defend a value that threatens to disappear in capitalism in favor of seeing things just as products and material that can be replaced at any time.
It is good to keep in mind that artist
do not produce products. Although art
work is often sold on a market the
artistic work is not ruled (only) by the idea to make something that can be
sold as a product. There have to be other strong reasons for my artistic
activity. Otherwise I am just serving the spirit of capitalism.
6.
The third main feature of the
capitalistic logic is concerning the structures of social life in capitalism.
Scheler speaks from the difference between community and society (Gemeinschaft
und Gesellschaft).
For Scheler life in capitalism is life
in societies which are ruled by laws. Society is based on a fundamental mistrust of its members who are
„competitive and rational subjects and balance their conflicts of interests
through laws and contracts“. In societies there is a inner tendency towards a
„mass of lonely individuals“.
Communities for Scheler are much more
based on confidence and solidarity. Here the way people live together is
organized by rules that emerge more or less organically from the community and
its members. Scheler claims that the medieval structure of how people lived
together was based on the idea of community. Modern life is structured in the
form of societies.
We have to be very careful with this
distinction. I don´t think that Scheler´s analysis is true. In societies of today there is still a lot of life in
community style existing (in art, in associations, in NGO´s etc.) and on the
other hand society offers some benefits that pre-modern communities didn´t give
at all. The most important of these benefits for artists are defined spaces of
individual freedom which are guaranteed by law.
But on the other hand nowadays the
inner tendency of capitalism to destroy the communal aspects of social life is
much more obvious than in the time when Scheler wrote down his thoughts. Today
the idea of competition has infected nearly all aspects of human life. It is very
difficult not to compete. And competition leads very easily into loneliness. A
capitalist answer to this problem seems to be the idea of networking.
Networking is based on the wish to make contact to people who can support my aims. The ideal target might be a so
called win-win-situation. But it is
still about winning or losing, to be better than others, to be successful in
the competition.
The non-capitalist alternative is the
idea of cooperation. Cooperation
means to work together on a common aim that is at the same time at least partly
the aim of each individual who is included. Cooperative situations create a
phenomenon that doesn´t exist in networks. This phenomenon can be called social freedom[6].
There are forms of freedom that only occur in a social context, i.e. in a group
of people who share a common aim. Theater or Performance Art ensembles will
immediately know what I am talking about. In creating an artistic project with
other people each individual can experience spaces of freedom that only appear
because of the group situation. In these situations people have ideas and
proposals that would never occur when the same people would be alone and think
about it.
7.
Scheler sees four infantile ideals of capitalism that form the capitalist spirit
and the forms of action that it triggers. With this list of ideals Scheler does
not reach the level of current anti-capitalistic approaches but for the aim to
offer some ideas that help artists to stay in distance to the spirit of
capitalism it is not necessary to provide an analysis of capitalism in all its
details and depths. We rather need a set of tools that helps to be aware when
we come close to the logic of capitalism. For some artists the four infantile
ideals might be a helpful element of this set.
The first infantile ideal is the big in a sensual way. All children
(maybe differing between girls and boys) are fascinated by big things: giants,
big animals or machines. In capitalism this naive fascination has become a
general directive. The bigger the better. Even the tendency of modern technique
to make devices smaller and/or to explore the nano-areas of the world is not
contradicting this ideal. On an economic level the ideal of the big is still ruling - mainly in the
belief in growth. Growth is one of the gods of capitalism. But the capitalistic
idea of growth is a distortion of the original form that comes from nature and
is embedded into the concept of becoming and passing, of flourishing and
wilting, of ripening and fading. Growth in capitalism believes in a constant
increase without producing any losses. Today we know too well how ridiculous
this belief has been and still is. The big lie of capitalism is the concept of
growth that refuses to take into account the psychic, social and ecological
expenses of his disastrous way of changing the world.
The second infantile ideal is speed or fast movements, an ideal that
has increased its importance through the digital revolution. Acceleration is a
dominant aspect on different levels of our lives. Despite all counter movements
(!) that have emerged during the last two decades, being fast is still seen as
the necessary condition to be successful in our society. There is a current
tendency to understand the domination of speed as an aspect that is part of our
human condition[7] and
not as having derived from the spirit of capitalism. There has always been the
idea that time is limited, but only in capitalism rushing through life as fast
as possible became a positive idea.
The third infantile ideal is, in
Scheler´s words, the feeling of power.
To have power over others and trying to be the first in an ongoing competition
are the tendencies which are followed by a capitalist mind. Today, in times of
globalization, the economic power that derives from this sort of thinking is at
least as strong as the political legitimized power of states and both power
centres are in an seemingly everlasting conflict. For Scheler the capitalist
wish for power has been linked from the beginning on with the wish for power
over nature. Science and technique were formed through this idea to have power
over the natural world.
To understand life as competition and
to have the will to rule others because you think you are the best are ideas
which look absolutely infantile from a non-capitalistic perspective, that
supports other values. Artists are carriers of these other values but still
they are in danger to fall into the traps of power will. This is especially
true for successful artist in fine arts. And in the performative arts there are
often power positions like the director or the choreographer which can lead
into very destructive situations if the people who have these positions are not
conscious about their power. Most people who have worked in a state theatre
will know what we are talking about.
The fourth and maybe most important
infantile ideal is the new. In
capitalism the idea of the new has a nearly religious relevance. Everything
that is new is good. Innovation is
the magic word of our world. Constantly countless companies, teams and
laboratories work to find something new for the markets. Scheler points out
that modern Europe where capitalism has arisen has been the first culture ever
in which the new is seen as more important and valuable than the old. More or
less in all other cultures the challenge has been to learn the old knowledge
and wisdom including the values which are accompanied with it and make it to
one´s own.
To be able to open to new possibilities
and not to stick always to the old ideas is one of the big achievements of
modernity. There was the good intention to liberate mankind from the narrow
framework of tradition and to give the chance to look for something unknown and
maybe better to everybody. Only through this change it has been possible to
create something so exciting as the movement we call today modern art. Art as
we understand it today needs the freedom to dare a new way bringing something
into the world. But artists do know that something that is only new is not yet
art and not worth to focus on. Here we can find a clear line to the logic of
capitalism. In capitalist thinking the new itself is the value we should
follow. But this is only an infantile ideal. Just being new is not a value. It
needs a further motivation to make something differently than it has been done
before.
Overestimating of the new in capitalism
paradoxically has led to a situation in which we have big difficulties to
really imagine something new. It seems that we lost the ability to think beyond
the status quo of the capitalist system. „Today it is easier to imagine the end
of the world than the end of capitalism.“[8]
The innovations that are presented as revolutions inside capitalism are things
like the new generation of smartphones or the self driving car.
Artists have still the ability to think
towards new possibilities. They have to be very careful that their work is not
just opening the gates to new markets but stay outside of the capitalist logic.
This is very difficult and it is important to be aware of these difficulties.
Big, fast, powerful, new – these are
the infantile ideals of capitalist thinking. It might be helpful for artists to
check from time to time their working situation if and how the four ideals have
taken roots somewhere. This is a first step for not being overwhelmed by this
capitalistic way of thinking and to be able to decide how much I allow these
ideals to influence the situation or how much distance I want to keep.
8.
Beside the analysis of the infantile
ideals of capitalism Scheler proposes a typology of human characters who are
dominant in the capitalist society. I would like to add a warning before I am
going to present some of these characters. Typology can be very helpful in order
to distinguish different aspects of a subject that we want to understand
better. But it is important to keep in mind that the types we are finding and
describing are not to be found in reality. Types don´t exist! Every human being
is a mixture of different types and the proportions of the mixture is part of
her or his individuality. Extreme right ideologies work exactly with the mistake to identify people of a certain
type and isolate them as those who don´t belong to us. My aim in presenting these types is just to give material that
might be helpful to question oneself
and not to judge others.
Keeping this in mind I start with a
type that has a very old fashioned name: the Bourgeois. In the times of Scheler
the word Bourgeois was part of the political and philosophical discussion.
Bourgeois is first of all one word for citizen, for being member of a certain
class. The other word is Citoyen who is member of a state with certain rights
and duties.
Marx compared the Bourgeois as the
member of the propertied class with the Proletarian as the class member who
only has his/her working ability as possession. Scheler follows another idea.
He doesn´t want to define the Bourgeois with his possessions or his role in
society but through his mental and psychic qualities and tendencies. In this
way the idea of the Bourgeois becomes wider and includes people who don´t
necessarily belong to the middle class. People from all social groups
(including artists) can be bourgeois and carry the corresponding attitudes. For
Scheler the Bourgeois is the bearer of the capitalistic spirit. This type that
had only a marginal role in most of the European epochs became the dominant
factor of modern societies. The reasons for this development are very complex
and for Scheler (and Max Weber) they have to do with the rising of Protestantism.
The Bourgeois has a tendency to
calculate all aspects of life and he/she has a strong need for safety. He/she
is looking for rules and predictability to be able to live in this world.
He/she always feels the need to show some results of their living in order to
proof their right to exist. He/she has to show that he/she is worth to be part
of the world. These are qualities and constraints which were more or less
unknown to the people living in antique or medieval societies. They saw
themselves much more as being embedded in a cosmos with little need to earn
one´s place inside this structure. For Scheler the bourgeois has a lack of
basic trust in the order of the world. The center of his/her soul is empty.
I guess that for most of us the described tendencies are not
unknown, no matter if we call ourself artist or not.
Instead of finding love to the world
the Bourgeois feels the need „to deal with the hostile world, to define it in a
quantitative way and to put it in order related to purposes“. The dominance of
the Bourgeois „will lead to a system of boundless competition and to an idea of
progress in which only the fact of being or having more will be acknowleged as valuable“ (Scheler).
In the current discussions the
Bourgeois has disappeared and has been replaced with the consumer. But the
consumer is a type too one-dimensional to get all the aspects of the
capitalistic spirit that the Bourgeois is carrying.
Artist in general are maybe not so much
in danger to focus on a safe and a predictable life and here we are very
different from the Bourgeois. (Or better: here the Bourgeois aspects of the typical mixture of our personalities are
not the dominant ones.) But there is another danger: Artist normally have to
give their artistic work to the world and they get resonance, comments,
critics, recognition or they don´t get it. In any case the reaction of a public
has a certain impact and it is very easy to create a relation between these
impacts and my self image as an artist or even as a human being. Having to
prove oneself is a (bourgeois) idea you can´t get rid of very easily...
The story of success of capitalism
can´t be understood only with the dominance of the Bourgeois. There has to be
another type who possesses courage, the willingness to take risks and – to put
it in the economical jargon of today – vision
competence. This type is indicated by Scheler as the entrepreneur. This is the type that is willing and able to take
economic risks which are crucial for the existence of capitalism. The
entrepreneur knows and takes the risks of a business and is ready to take the
responsibility for it. He/she often possesses a sort of moral flexibility that
helps him to put the capitalistic purposes first and then think about ethic
values. We know too well that this flexibility leads easily to an unscrupulous
behavior.
The first time that this entrepreneur
was seen as a sort of mass phenomenon on the European stage was, according to
Scheler, in the 16th century – in the form of the pirat and the buccaneer. In
the entrepreneur two figures which were separated until then came together: the
warrior and the trader. I don´t know if this theory is still tenable but it
makes sense anyway. There must have been an incredible amount of buccaneers on
the oceans of the 16th and 17th century. The story of Francis Drake shows how
fast these outlaws were able to become an essential part of the state
activities and to an well accepted part of these societies.
The entrepreneur is a very ambivalent
figure. But there are some strange and maybe disturbing parallels to the modern
artist and the performance artist. I´ll come back to this point soon.
The typological couple of Bourgeois and
Entrepreneur has developed capitalism to a dominant factor of the world and of
mankind and it seems that there is no opponent strong enough to challenge
capitalism and to overcome its dominance.
9.
The artist is – beside many other
possible descriptions - also one of the typological figures inside capitalist
societies. Modern art has its roots in the same ground as capitalism. Art as we
know it today is a result of the developments in Europe since the Renaissance.
It is very likely that the character of art has to change profoundly in a world
that wouldn´t follow the spirit of capitalism any longer.
Keeping this in mind I would like to
give some typical aspects of the artist of our times. I am not trying at all to
define the artist. I am just trying
to sort out my own thoughts about it and can only hope that this is helpful for
the reader.
Scheler doesn´t give a typological
description of the artist although he/she plays for him a crucial role in the process
of overcoming capitalism. It is the artist who keeps alive a certain ethos or spirit that stands opposite to
the capitalistic spirit. Some of these aspects of the artistic ethos have been
mentioned above.
In our world the idea of being an
artist possesses a strong attraction. Living as an artist seems to be a very
fulfilling version of existence to quite a lot of people. The philosopher
Charles Taylor once said that the type of the artist never before has been so
popular and respected than in our times[9].
Why is that so? Why has being an artist such a strong romantic flavor that of
course has very little in common with the real situation? I see one possible
answer in the aspect that art is connected with the idea of freedom. Artists
have more space for self determination than the majority of people. It is one
of the necessary conditions for doing art that you are able to decide how to
work and which elements or partners you choose to work with. The value of self
determination has no direct relation to the question of success as an artist.
Self determination is a value by itself and it can help to prevent that the
artist´s work is primarily seen as a product with a price on the market.
In the encounter with one´s own
curiosity, with one´s needs and questions artists use all materials and means
that seem to be helpful in the process, i.e. more or less all aspects in the
world that allow to give form to the subject of interest: the body, the voice,
sounds, colors, stones, wood, clay, memories, feelings, imaginations, fantasies,
languages, processes, spaces, relations, movements, atmospheres. From this work
emerge things, works, results, objects, phenomenons, processes, and situations
that don´t follow the idea of utility, that don´t give clear and definite answers
to the questions which were asked and which are aesthetic but not necessarily
beautiful formations.
Only after the division of the world
into a capitalistic part that is useful, controllable and computable and the
other part that is not seen as useful but has been a fundamental aspect of life
in precapitalistic societies, art could gain this strong value and
meaningfulness that it possesses today. After constructing a world that was
appropriate for the victory of capitalism art moved into the role of the other, the opposite and the marginal.
Only art – beside the residua of religion and nature as spaces for longing –
dedicates to this other side of the world and keeps the memory alive for an
understanding of humanity in which utility is not one of the relevant dimensions
of life.
Modern art dealt with this role in
different ways during the last centuries. Well into the 19th century art tried
to defend the sphere of dignity against the attacks of science and capitalist
thinking. Around the turn into the 20th century big parts of the Avantgarde
became self-orientated and elitist. Relevance for the life conditions which
were the context of this art making process had very little meaning inside
these artistic tendencies[10].
The situation started to change after the second world war when art began to be
more interested in a closer connection to life. John Cage is one of the
pioneers of this development that led in the sixties and seventies into the
history of performance art, the prototypical life art.
But even for artists it is not easy to
stay on the opposite side to capitalist spirit. There is this extremely high
ability of capitalism to incorporate all counter movements that occur as a
reaction of the capitalist spirit. All anti-capitalist protests of the last
decades - artistic or not - have been successfully economized – maybe with the
exception of Occupy that wasn´t big
enough to make it into a product. The
criticism that occurred from the artists against capitalism have been
incorporated since the late 1960ies and played an important part in the change
of the very bureaucratic structure of capitalism into something much more
flexible.
The artistic criticism didn´t and still
doesn´t focus mainly on the social aspects of injustice. These (very important)
fights and discussions mainly do happen inside capitalistic logic. Artists
criticism is founded more on the thesis that capitalism doesn´t offer enough
possibilities to develop your personality and your talents and become in the
deeper sense a human being[11].
Humanity is not a value in itself for capitalism. But if we look at the
economic world of today it seems that growing of personality, strong
individuality and flexibility – values that are needed by artists - are very
much supported from the capitalist system. Artistic values like self
fullfilment, flexibility and creativity have become a central element of the
role model for people in the business.
In fact it has become a necessity to possess these competences if you want to be successful. It seems that artistic criticism
misses the point nowadays.
Cultural scientist Christoph Bartmann
maintains that Performance Art has become the art form for late capitalism.
Manager and Performance Artists are the fraternal or sisterly bounded
prototypes for the modern entrepreneur. For both the idea of working with
processes play a big role[12].
For both the idea of self fullfilment is crucial. „Become who you are!“ said
Nietzsche and this is the big challenge today for everyone who wants to act
successfully in this system. For Bartmann it is the performance artist who can
show what this means: „Only in performance we prove that we have something like
a self and that we are different to others. That we are ourselves when we work
and not just somebody who takes orders. (...) The artistic performances, as
radical and unconventional they might be – contribute considerably to the
modeling of the new business subjectivity“[13].
This is a strong thesis that doesn´t take into account how much the artistic
values get distorted when they are included into the capitalist context.
Capitalism uses these values to increase profit and not because it has any
interest in the growing of humanity. These values have turned into tools for
economic success and only as long as they function for this purpose they are
supported by companies etc.
But still it is hard to deny that on a
structural level the performance artist offers a sort of role model for the
entrepreneur and manager in late capitalism. At the same time despite these
disturbing parallels there are still some crucial differences. One is that
artists have the better reason to engage into a project, a reason that has usually nothing or very little to do
with the above mentioned four infantile ideals of capitalism. The infantile
ideals create the ideological framework to which the artistic qualities and
competences are subordinated when they meet business world. The effect of this
subordination is that the qualities become trivialized and infantilized. Self
fullfilment is not the same thing inside the capitalistic spirit and on the
artistic field. In some sense you cannot include art into business because
through the incorporation the qualities and ideas change immensely their value
and their meaning.
One aspect that might help to clarify
this difference a bit further is the way how artists work with doubts. As
artists have to experience quite often, doubts are an integral element of the
artistic process and not, as in the business world, a sign for the need of self
optimization. Effective problem-solving strategies don´t function for the arts
because we need the problems as material for our artistic work.
Scheler also contradicts the thesis
that art can be incorporated by the capitalistic spirit because this thesis
fails to see one crucial aspect. The artistic elements lose their meaning and
importance inside the business world because capitalism possesses a very
different hierarchy of values than art – and than most pre-capitalist
societies! Scheler talks about a „revolution of values“ in capitalism. The role
of artists as critics of capitalism is so strong because they are more or less
the last representatives of an ethos and an understanding of the world that
doesn´t follow the principles of capitalism. The question who uses or possesses
creativity, flexibility or autonomy are secondary in this context. The spirit
of capitalism revalues everything that it incorporates.
All this of course does not imply that
artists and their work cannot be integrated into the capitalistic system. There
are dominant structures like the globalized art market. It is impossible for
artists to work and live absolutely outside of capitalism. This is one of the
reasons why we need to find a clear distance in our minds from the capitalistic
spirit. Only then there is a chance to overcome this spirit not only as the
dominant ruling power of the world but also as a sort of mind set inside the
individual human beings.
Here are some proposals how to proceed
as an artist on this path:
- to keep an inner distance to the logic of
capitalism and to look for alternative logics which are more appropriate for
art and an artistic life,
- focusing resolutely
on the own artistic questions without
bringing into account the aspects of financing and marketing too early,
- to create a self
image of a practitioner who uses
oneself as an example of a human being and tries to explore what this could
mean,
- to develop one´s own artistic program that forms life and
practise,
- to find appropriate
ways of working with other artists (cooperation instead of competition).
10.
Theses proposals do not support the
idea of a bohemian artist who has to be poor. It is important to ask how an
artist is able to survive and to have the means to work inside the economized
world and at the same time to put the above mentioned great demands on
him-/herself. Scheler makes a suggestion that for me seems to be worth to
discuss. He states two axioms that
help to keep the distance to the capitalist spirit and allows to live in this
system.
„1. Axiom: As little I - as somebody who produces works of a
spiritual culture (geistige Kultur) - owe to the economic society, so little
owes the society to me for what I am producing.
2. Axiom: Since I am - apart
from my artistic production – a member of this economic society, I have the
duty to make my living in an honest way outside of my activities as an artist.“
This is a clear statement and a good
starting point for a discussion (not the end of it!). Let us start with the
second axiom that evades the usual romantic image of the artist who only lives
for her or his art. Who hasn´t heard a sentence like: Do nothing only for
money? This is by the way a saying that you can even find in management books
for self optimizing strategies. Now Scheler comes and says: Earn your money in
what way ever as long as it is honest and keep your art free from financial and capitalistic considerations! This is at
least very consequent.
For quite a lot of artists it will be
difficult to follow this idea because they haven´t learnt much else than their
art and they have to take bad payed jobs and/or to start teaching. This is in
fact exactly the situation a lot of artists have to face. The problem is that
most artists need to give so much energy and time into earning one´s living
that there is not enough energy left for the artistic activities. Is there a
solution? Unconditional basic income?
Another thing that Scheler questions
with this second axiom is the idea that only artists who are able to dedicate
their whole life to their vocation are really professionals. And everybody else
who has another job is in danger to be seen as amateur. Scheler says the
opposite. If my art is dictated to the logic of the capitalistic market, it is
impossible to bring it into the world without spiritual damage[14].
Only if I divide the economic sphere of my life radically from the artistic one
a space of real freedom for my art can open up.
How to live and how to earn money is always
an individual decision based on one´s own personal situation in life. There is
no general rule. Still to me it seems worth to consider Scheler´s refusal to
divide artists in the usual way into professionals and amateurs.
In the first axiom Scheler also draws a
clear line. The economic society doesn´t owe me anything and I don´t owe
anything to it. This claim is pretty far away from how we see the relation
between art and society usually.
There is a difference between the
economic society with its capitalistic logic and the society in a broader sense
with elements who still resist to follow the spirit of capitalism. Here art
will always find some support.
But does society in general needs art?
Not easy to say. Do human beings need art? This is another question that needs
longer considerations. Do artists need art? Yes.
Beside the fact that art has become a
sort of product for an art market, it has one other important function inside the
economized world. Art often helps to mitigate the negative effects of
capitalism and helps to make life in this system bearable. This therapeutic
function is a legitimate task for the arts that is also taken by sports, by
music industry or holiday industry. In the capitalistic system Bourgeois and
consumer have quite a set of options to compensate their despair and to
ventilate their anger. In this sense some people seem to need art. But is it
possible to get my artistic self definition from this task? Is it enough for me
as an artist to help making life more bearable for people? Is this a cynical
question? What about the subversive power of art that wants to find an
alternative to the capitalistic spirit? Art as a form of resistance? Is making
art a political activity? Is it possible to make political interventions with art
without loosing the artistic character of the actions? Is politically engaged
art more than decorative indignation?
These questions are crucial for performance artists who act very often in
public space or in other words: in the political sphere.
11.
But still this field it is not the
place to find the answer to the question how I can find my position as an
artist in the capitalistic world. Political engagement of artists can easily
still follow the spirit of capitalism. Even in cases when the art is meant as a
statement against capitalism.
Capitalism is not working like a
political ideology, like Marxism or neo-liberalism. Ideologies have (roughly
speaking) the habit to see the world through the glasses of their own world
concept and to interpret the facts
only in this way. Contradictions only show a lack of understanding the ideology
or how to improve some details of it. Capitalism is more open at that point.
The capitalist spirit recognizes contradictions and in doing so creates the
possibility to colonize these counter movements in the long run. Capitalism in
the end will support these movements as long as there is money in it. But the
structure of the capitalist spirit or logic will not change through these ways
of resistance.
With Max Scheler we can say that the
spirit of capitalism represents a system of values that includes a very
different hierarchy than all other known social
systems. The ethics of capitalism possess a flexibility that can be
frightening. In some way it is beyond
good and evil, as long as the system can capitalize social movements and
developments.
What is the connection between these
considerations and the question of how to be an artist in capitalism? As long
as artist want to build and keep a distance to the capitalist spirit, we have
to be aware of the big danger that our attempts and alternative concepts can be
colonized by capitalism. How can we prevent this?
1. I don´t know.
2. With precise
thinking! Everything that is taken over by capitalism is at the same time
distorted. Distortion happens here through a change of the ethical contexts.
Our task (?) as artists is to contextualize as precise as possible. In other
words, we have to create a (private or social) conceptual frame that doesn´t
follow the logic of capitalism.
3. We can try to develop a non-capitalist ethical
system that is clear and strong enough for not to be colonized by capitalism.
There is a lot to do...
[1] There are two sources for these
considerations. One is my essay „Being artist in capitalism“ that I have
written in German (Künstler sein im Kapitalismus, Athena-Verlag, Oberhausen 2018),
the other is my blog that I write about these issues in German and english
(artistincapitalism.blogspot.de)
[2] I don´t think there are english
versions of these articles. In German the titles are: 1. Der Bourgeois; 2. Der
Bourgeois und die religiösen Mächte; 3. Die Zukunft des Kapitalismus, first
published in Max Scheler: Vom Umsturz der Werte, Leipzig 1919 (download:
https://archive.org/details/vomumsturzderwe00schegoog); there are other
versions in the Internet and a book: Max Scheler: Ethik und Kapitalismus,
Wiesbaden 2010.
Between the two world wars Scheler has been an important voice in German
philosophy. Now he is nearly forgotten but I think some of his writings (not
all) are worth to be read again, not as a sort of truth but as an inspiration.
[3] Scheler in his time wasn´t the only one who questioned the
understanding of work in capitalism and made a connection to the protestant
ethics. More famous than Scheler is an article of Max Weber about „The
Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism“ (1905 and 1920). There are
english versions of the text in the internet.
[4] The performance artist Terry Fox
in an interview with the magazine Avalanche
in 1974:
Question:
How does your body function in that kind of heterogeneous situation?
Terry
Fox: The body is exactly one element among others, one of the links in the
chain.
Question:
So you reduce it to the status of the other elements.
Terry
Fox: No, I raise the other elements to the status of the body.
[5]
Rilke has felt this
loss of relation between thing and men very strongly and made it to a main
issue of his poetry.
[6] The word Social Freedom was used
by the philosopher Hegel already; the contemporary German philosopher Axel
Honneth uses it in his work in great detail.
[7] The German sociologist
Hartmut Rosa analyzes this and other tendencies in his work; see Rosa: Social
Acceleration: A new theory of modernity, Columbia University Press 2013 and his
books in German.
[8]
A quotation you find in the writings of Mark Fisher, Slavoy Zizek and Hartmut
Rosa.
[9]
I can´t remember where Taylor said this.
I am aware of the fact that this
positive image of the artist is very much attacked by the extreme right. But
this is another story although it has much to do with our questions. When
capitalism doesn´t fulfil any of the promises it gives, right wing movements
become stronger. The extreme right always sees art and artists as one of the enemies whereas capitalism rather tries
to incorporate art into their world. The reaction of the artists to these two
different politics have to be different, too.
[10]
I am aware of the many exceptions to this mainstream process: some branches of
DaDa, Expressionism, Futurism, Bauhaus, to name a few.
[11]
In the German tradition it was Friedrich Schiller who expressed these criticism
for the first time: in his „Letters Upon The Aesthetic Education of
Man“ from 1794.
[12]
It is interesting to see that the word Performance
occurred more or less at the same time in the 1950ies in business (Peter
Drucker used it in his books about management), in philosophy (as the
performative turn: J.L. Austin) and in art.
[13]
Christoph Bartmann: Leben im Büro, München 2012, p. 216. Maybe this role
modelling is especially strong for women in late capitalism. Performance Art icon
Marina Abramovitch seems to represent for a lot of people the self defined
woman who is at the same time boundlessly willing to suffer and to toil.
[14]
Having this claim in mind it could be interesting to discuss the works of
artists like Andy Warhol, Damien Hirst and others.
