Value-added

For me it's important that my work should not have an ‘exchange value’, because it then becomes just another product. On the contrary, my art works will be given back to the Colchester Freecycle community for free, turning waste/valueless objects back into desireable objects that provoke notions of the potential of creativity; also investigating Marx’s notion of value in that I am investigating the potential for consumer and industrial waste to turned back into a form of 'profit' for communities by way of community engagement with my work.

What is interesting is that, just as Marx never really offered a tangible solution to the deficiencies of the capitalist system, art, too suggests new visions of the world, stimulating debate, without necessarily offering tangible solutions. Marx’s work and ideas continually inspire political and philosophical debate as well as a lot of art work and art theory (such as Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics). His ideas continue to live and breath, for as long as capitalism thrives anyway, just as art will always be part of our lives. Perhaps we can view art as part of the same process of our struggles - indeed, alongside Marx's ideas about class struggles too.

Marx postulated that the Bourgeoisie (capitalists) will be overthrown by the proletariat (underclass) that it created, just as the Aristocrats were overthrown by the Bourgeoisie that it created. Who knows how and when such a revolution could begin to occur, maybe it already has, or maybe Marx was wrong, but perhaps we can see it happening as part of our cultural evolution. For instance, Capitalism gave rise to and feeds off Popular Culture (mass culture) and perhaps popular culture (the culture of the common people) is overthrowing Bourgeois culture. Perhaps you can see it happening in entertainment in the shift from industry-generated to user-generated media content in the current advent of the digital revolution. Is Bourgoise (Business) culture creating the conditions for its own demise?

For example, the internet has become a powerful aspect of entertainment and culture (and politics), and, as a result advertising revenues in the media industry are rapidly shifting from traditional entertainment sources such as TV to the internet, depleting advertising revenues for mainstream terrestrial and digital TV and this, it has been suggested, encourages companies to produce middle of the road TV programmes aimed at mass markets in a bid to win commissions from (evermore revenue-conscious) broadcast executives.
This makes it harder for any commercial businesses (such as ITV, Channels 4,5 Virgin and Sky) to justify quality programmes, even with pressure from regulatory bodies, such as Ofcom in the UK, who aim for plurality and diversity in broadcasting, whilst de-regulating ownership rules to make way for more and more companies in an already saturated market – which makes worse the problem of obtaining already scarce advertising revenues but produces more 'choice' for the viewers (Hmm, I'm thinking Sky?).
So, audiences are turning to underground sources – internet TV for example – for different content, such as Youtube or Podcasts, or other free content, where they can find an increasing amount of content by independent producers and amateurs in the (presently unregulated) internet TV boom - and watch it at their convenience.

So what effect does this scenario have on the cultural landscape? I believe we are experiencing a cultural revolution that is threatening capitalist cultural values, such as competitiveness, as corporations soak up their competition and make huge losses as we are currently seeing across the entire media industry -which is our main cultural outlet outside of our communities. And all this is compounded by issues such as the banking crisis and climate change, which is driving up the cost of living in western societies and restricting their economies even further.

So, I am not concerned with making art products that have an exchange value. Rather, I believe that art can make a positive contribution to our cultural landscape in these turbulent times, as it did during the second world war - after which was created two of the most extraordinary examples of interventionist government policy here in the uk - the NHS and The Arts Council. As I have said before, good ideas, like these, are free, it’s just our commitment as artists and our ability to think creatively that can make great art happen for free or at minimal cost.

I think that at community level, art projects can be made for free by including people in the process and by utilising networks, such as the Freecycle network, that operate, in one sense, outside capitalist modes of exchange. I am quite sure that it is possible to devise great ideas for art using free materials (of which we have seen there are plenty around), free space (such as temporary development plots for community gardens or empty office/shop spaces for exhibitions or temporary artist work areas) and a broader definition of artistic activity to include all manner of human interaction – community cultural projects involving anything from gardens to social events to sculpture.

So , where was I... Ah, yes, turning waste back into profit - or rather 'abstract profit' - in the form of community engagement, whilst creating autonomous art works, made possible through the freedom of creativity and the abundance of free resources around us!


Incidently, the picture Ive used at the top of this entry is the logo from the Value-added conference held recently to discuss 'Roles, participation and economies in contemporary visual practice'. There was a focus on 'participation and social exclusion in current European, central and local government cultural and regeneration policies' and was centrally concerned with London based artists in this process of regeneration, referring to previous policy statements and their emphasis on 'Excellence' and other leadership qualities for arts practitioners.
I also recently read an article in 'Variant' entitled 'The Artist as Executive: The Executive as Artist' which was concerned with policical terms such as 'Social Exclusion' 'Excellence' and 'Leadership' and the seeming drive to managerialise artists to adopt business philosophies. Kirsten Forket also highlights that the term 'Exclusion' removes the possibility of exploitation in that 'one is not exploited but simply excluded'. Indeed, as Forket also points out, in Ruth Levitas' book 'The Inclusive Society: Social exclusion and New Labour' this discourse removes the power relations that produce inequality so that 'terms like inequality and exploitation' start to disappear. So, if you're not 'included' in the economic drive (in a capitalist sense - even as an exploited worker) then you are 'excluded' from society.


Therefore, it seems ironic that Godelier (1970) highlights Marx's term 'Surplus Value' as evidence for exploitation and the German word for Surplus Value is.....yep, 'VALUE ADDED'.