claro como água

"John Kelsey - How can we interrupt anything in the
contemporary art world today? Art circulates at a
growing rate of speed, perfecttly synchronized with
the movement of capital and information.
Claire Fontaine - The contemporary art world is
several different worlds at once, all of which are
concealed in the large stomach and intestine of
Capital. Without even criticizing the criteria that
one has to fulfill and the Caudine Forks one has to
traverse in order to take part in the visible surface
of this world, we can say, more basically, that every-
thing that circulates in this society depends on eco-
nomic flux. So, how could art be an exception? There
is, however, a strange connection between libidinal
and monetary economy in the art world, which goes
beyond the simple question of fetishism and is quite
fascinating. There are surely things that could be
done with that, with this specific state of desire. If
flattery and provocation were the two pillars of the
avant-gardes of the last century, two ways of relating
two old forms of power, we've now entered into a pe-
riod in which one has to interfere with the concerns
of those who govern and who are governed. Through
all that, art doesn't interrupt anything, it only ex-
presses things that would otherwise be drowned out
or simplified, it saves phenomena from the digestion
and expulsion of the signifying field. Everything that
appears as professionally connoted doesn't interrupt
anything at all, and that's clear since the defeat of the
workers' movement. The interruptions will come from
elsewhere, and, for us, making art is a way of staying
awake until those moments occur. We will accompany
them wherever they manifest themselves; producing
them is not our ambition nor our power."

(excerto de "CLAIRE FONTAINE, Selfportrait of a Ready
Made (by a collective artist) - An interview by John
Kelsey", retirado do nº15 da publicação "uovo achromatic")


Claire Fontaine, Vivre! Vaincre soi-même la dépression brickbat,
2006 Digital photograph and brick + The True Artist, 2004 Smoke
on ceiling