Neomaterialism

is a blog run by Joshua Simon, curator and writer and a 2011-2013 Vera List Center Fellow at the New School, who is researching expanded notions of Thingness. The aim of this blog is to examine the order of things today. How come symbols behave like materials (“fake” and “real” brands)? Why have commodities become the historical subject (do we furnish our world with IKEA or rather we dwell in its world)? Are humans reduced to simply absorbing surpluses (with baby diapers being a form of child labor)? How labor has shifted from production to consumption? Why is everything we do is work (even when we are not employed) and how can a generation overqualified for the labor market can change everything? This blog hosts source materials and documents, together with commentary and analysis. Re-introducing different notions of dialectical materialism into the already established conversation on the subjectivity of things, Neomaterialism challenges the investigation which the new-materialists have begun, relating it to labor, debt, credit, animisim and alienation, life-taxes and social organization. With the book Neomaterialism (Sternberg Press, 2013), available in stores now the blog also operates as an ongoing archive for references, reviews and events.

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Amid Declining Ratings, Cable Networks Speed Up Reruns To Make Room For Ads

Labor moves from production to consumption and the value we generate is rationalized and priced through rating systems, among other things. But the value our attention generates has declined compared to twenty years ago. This NPR segment tells the story of how cable re-runs of sitcoms have been compressing shows to make room for more commercials.

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Last week Francesco Finizio's show ARKPARKCRAFTRAFTCLINICCLUBPUB opened at MoBY. The title of Finizio's exhibition is largely indicative of its spatial character; it integrating different spaces into a single portmanteau word - ark, park, craft, raft,clinic, club, pub. What usually defines a space is the very fact of its immobility. Even the French word for real estate “immobilier,” follows this logic of “immobile property.” However, in our reality, space itself has become monetized, and so the nature of the space that we occupy at any given moment, is constantly changing. Market economy was able to make the space flicker and shiver - from the skyscraper that enabled the extrusion of the rentable floor space per unit area of land, to the suburban sprawl, that gave a spatial expression to the socially engineered form of lifelong indebtedness, the mortgage loan.

In this reality we become disorientated - the interchange demonstrates the counterintuitive nature of the current spatial reality; to take a left turn we need to get off at the right hand exit. In this reality you get offered to buy an insurance policy at the privatized post office and a shaver at the commercial gas station. When everything is exchangeable you are no longer sure where you are.

ARKPARKCRAFTRAFTCLINICCLUBPUB combines a survey of some of Finizio’s key works together with new projects he has developed especially for MoBY; a monochromatic boutique, a dining hall for cats, a dream transmission platform, a store that changes its business ten time during one week, a shanty town of toy houses ,an employment bureau for Lenin doppelgangers to take shifts at his mausoleum, a campfire made of skateboards, an electronic playroom, a home experiment in identifying human figures in explosion clouds while defecating, a vision test center for chairs, and a souvenir shop for a theme park that is a construction site, are some of the projects that the exhibition includes. Together, they transform the museum space into a sort of dysfunctional shopping center that was fused with a UFO that went off course and ended up in a disarrayed community center.  

Finizio’s work is dictated by the overwhelming material saturation surrounding us. With simple yet sophisticated tools, he utilizes the resources available to him. By employing concrete and everyday means, Finizio’s ongoing research into the languages and gestures of consumerism and mass communications, produce new and poignant articulations of our economic, cultural, social, political and artistic condition.

Through the use of DIY aesthetics and an often off-the-cuff approach full of humor and self-irony, Finizio has been developing a unique and idiosyncratic body of work rooted in the observation of incidents and phenomena that revolve around questions of exchange and value, agency and cultural meaning. His installations operate as both events and models. They entangle the depiction of scripted spaces of commerce, habitat, display, construction, archive and work, with a model-like quality that actively speculates on the uses, statuses, and sentiments that these spaces perform.

Since nothing is certain under the rule of capital, we are all busy speculating - both the investment banker and the precariat, are constantly compelled to create models by which they can conduct themselves. The only invariant element in these models is the perpetuation of the market economy. Under capital, speculation has changed from independent and inverted thinking, to a way which ensures that the economic and political world remains intact.

With their playful makeshift style, Finizio’s clever installations push a given situation to its breaking point, revealing contradictory states and hidden dimensions of the economic world we live in. By proposing the familiar world as it is folded inside-out, Finizio's work suggests a mode of operation that we can call counter-speculation.

For images visit here

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CHS College-wide Symposium: Materialities–Ideas Around Objects, Matter, Materiality and Stuff

CHS College-wide Symposium: Materialities–Ideas Around Objects, Matter, Materiality and Stuff6 February 2015 | 10am – 4.30pm

Battersea, Gorvy Lecture Theatre

In a cultural moment characterized by globalisation, rapid digitalisation and ecological uncertainty, many theorists, artists and designers are reconsidering materiality. Disciplines as diverse as anthropology, philosophy, psychology and material science have new things to say about matter, with profound implications.

How has the digital changed our relationship to the material world? Might we regard inanimate matter as having its own forms of agency or being? What new narratives might we construct around objects? What relationships and processes do they engage? This one-day symposium gathers visiting theorists and practitioners to discuss materiality from a range of perspectives.

Speakers include

Joshua Simon, author of Neomaterialism (2013)

Professor Michael Newman, author of I know very well...but all the same: Essays on Artists of the Still and Moving Image (2014)

Anne Brodie, artist-in-residence on the scientific Antarctic Survey

Nina Trivedi, independent curator and writer, reviews editor of the Journal of Visual Culture

Dr Tanya Harrod, design historian, whose latest book is The Real Thing: essays on making in the modern world (2015)

Dr Jon Goodbun, architect, theorist, writer

Convened by Martina Margetts and Lucy Soutter

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Red Tape & Eady Forum: Neomaterialism with Joshua Simon

5 February 2015 | 5pm – 7pm

Kensington, Lecture Theatre 1

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Maayan Strauss: Seven Sinks | Andrea Meislin Gallery, NYC

Andrea Meislin Gallery is pleased to announce Seven Sinks, an installation by Brooklyn-based artist Maayan Strauss. The site-specific installation incorporates photography, sculpture and sound.

  Maayan Strauss’ Seven Sinks is designed as a perverse model kitchen countertop. Where one would usually find a single basin, complete with polished chrome faucet atop a marble countertop, Strauss has placed seven. The expansive counter that fills the gallery space resembles more closely the interior of a kitchen showroom than an art gallery.

  The installation speaks to the ways in which the sink—one of the most basic elements of domestic life—can reflect class and status, and despite its ever-presence, can be transformed into an object of desire. Presenting the relationship between art, domesticity, and consumption, the work highlights the commercial framework and economic reality in which it exists.

  In 2012, when Strauss created the first iteration of this piece, entitled Counter Sink, she approached Kohler—a main purveyor of American plumbing fixtures—to contribute the sinks necessary for her project. In “commissioning” the commercial entity to submit the sculptural elements of the work, Strauss reversed the common relationship between artist and corporation—the latter typically commissioning the former.

  In treating the sinks as ready-made material, Strauss alludes to the discrete transformation of the object from utilitarian hardware to luxury commodity.  The placement of the sinks within a gallery space speaks directly to the very systems of consumption and valuation represented by the ready-made. In rendering the gallery as the ultimate showroom, Strauss creates a more aggressive brand of ready-made that actively engages with its politics and rhetoric.

  While Seven Sinks may seem to be a standard, manufactured product, at second glance it reveals itself as an elaborate crafted water fountain. The water that drips and flows from the faucets is synchronized to flow and drain in a continuous cycle, creating a rhythmic sound that immerses the viewer in the experience—and simultaneously renders the sinks off-limits for use by viewers.

  A closer look at Seven Sinks reveals that the marble countertop is in fact a high-resolution photograph of Carrera marble, taken by Strauss, and mounted on the wooden island’s surface. With the water in the sinks splashing up onto the printed surface, the image will deteriorate over time, giving the installation life as an artwork that is in constant flux. The faucets and sinks are used as sculptural material in this installation, which emphasizes their qualities as designed objects, but also points to their function and dysfunction. In activating the ready-made and bringing it (back) into use, Strauss suggests the paradox of its dysfunction.

Strauss’ interpretation of this utilitarian object strips the sink of its use and universality. The running water turns the whole installation into an object, which in turn functions as a physical framework for expanding on, and departing from the same systems that it represents. 

MAAYAN STRAUSS

Seven Sinks

January 29 – February 28, 2015

Opening reception: Thursday, January 29 | 6 – 8 PM

ANDREA MEISLIN GALLERY     534 WEST 24TH STREET     NEW YORK, NY 10011

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The Artist as Debtor: A Conference about the Work of Artists in the Age of Speculative Capitalism

We live in an era of unprecedented profits from contemporary art sales and massive debts incurred by art students. Are these phenomena related? Is it a coincidence that in an age in which art can be made from nothing, the price attached to an art degree is staggeringly high? Contemporary art institutions amass great wealth through real estate development and the value of their holdings  — why then do museums, art-related businesses and art schools rely so heavily on precarious and unpaid labor provided by artists? What are the connections between big money in the art world and the big debts taken on by so many young artists? Are artists encouraged to believe that extreme economic disparity is just part of the way the art world works? Do romantic ideas about merit and talent mask a system of indenture?

Artists Noah Fischer (member of Occupy Museums) and Coco Fusco will present a conference to discuss the art and the debt economy on January 23 2015 at The Great Hall of Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.  This event is made possible thanks to support from The School of Art at Cooper Union. Our featured speakers include artists Julieta Aranda, William Powhida, Martha Rosler, Gregory Sholette; writer Brian Kuan Wood; activists from W.A.G. E. and BFAMFAPHD, and cultural theorist Andrew Ross.

We hope to engage students, art workers, and all those interested in art’s future in an extended reflection about ways that the art economy extracts financial benefits from artists who may not even be selling their  art. We envision this as an opportunity for a growing  movement to counter economic inequality in the arts, to gain strength from collective wisdom, and to develop better strategies for responding to situations that make many artists feel powerless.

For more information about The Artist as Debtor: A Conference about the Work of Artists in the Age of Speculative Capitalism, please contact: [email protected] and and [email protected] 

The event is free, please rsvp here

please join Facebook Event.

Twitter: #ArtistasDebtor

January 23, 2015

1-9pm

The Great Hall, Cooper Union

7 East 7th Street

New York NY 10003

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Gwen Guthrie's ”Ain’t Nothin’ Goin’ on But The Rent”

Thanks to Maayan Strauss

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canistaywithyouwhileirentmyplaceonairbnb.com

Can I stay with you while I rent my place on airbnb?

It's Airbnb for Airbnb.  You’re making loads of cash by renting your place. You’d make even more if you had somewhere to stay so you can rent it more often. But asking “Can I stay with you?” can get awkward.  Join a community of people who say “sure.”

http://canistaywithyouwhileirentmyplaceonairbnb.com/

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CCS Bard presents: The Visitor Talks–Dialogues, Friday December 12, 10:30-1:30, Judd Foundation

The Visitor Talks–Dialogues, fall 2014

Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College

Judd Foundation 101 Spring Street New York, NY 10012

www.bard.edu/ccs

Friday December 12, 10:30-1:30 Three-dimensionality, Materiality, and Spatio-temporality: explores issues pertaining to the intersecting ideas of time, space and form in contemporary sculpture, installation, material practices and their attendant discourses. This discussion will examine the space and the time of art's moment of public-ness - how art's effectiveness, its affect and its material experience can be conceived of as both historical construct and contemporary event.  For more information, please contact us: [email protected] or 212.219.2747 or visit: www.bard.edu/ccs.

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Zachary Formwalt Three Exchanges opens November 27 at SMBA

Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam presents the solo exhibition Zachary Formwalt –Three Exchanges. In three recent video installations, Zachary Formwalt focuses on the architecture of the new OMA-designed Shenzhen Stock Exchange, and the Amsterdam stock and commodities exchange designed at the end of the nineteenth century by the socialist architect, H.P. Berlage. The three installations dig into a fundamental issue surrounding financial trade: whereas financial transactions seem to dictate our economy and thus their effects can be felt everywhere, the activity of trading itself has become increasingly remote, unavailable for any kind of actual human encounter. The architecture of the stock exchanges serves as a starting point to a profound investigation into the limitations of photography to represent capital and into the interrelationships between financial capitalism and image making.

Opening: Thursday, November 27, 5pm

Rozenstraat 59, 1016 NN Amsterdam

[email protected] 

Saturday, Dec. 29, 10:30am: ‘Art, Capital and Avant-Garde’ in De Balie, Amsterdam

In relation to the exhibition in SMBA, a debate will be organized in De Balie on Saturday 29 November in collaboration with Amsterdam Art Weekend. With the participation of: Olav Velthuis, Beatrix Ruf, Zachary Formwalt, Matthew Slotover, moderated by Defne Ayas. 

More information and tickets at debalie.nl

Image: Zachary Formwalt, Unsupported Transit, 2011, single-channel HD video with sound 14 minutes 25 seconds

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ICA Culture Now: Joshua Simon, Friday December 5, 1pm

ICA Culture Now: Joshua Simon, Friday December 5, 1pm

Petra Cortright True Life: I'm a Selfie - (Fake True's Negativity Remix), 2013 Webcam video, 1 minute 39 sec. Courtesy the artist

Joshua Simon gives a talk in relation to a newly commissioned text, Shockwork: the Selfie and the Labour of the Overqualified, with an introduction by Nimrod Kamer. Simon examines the selfie and its recent emergence and proliferation, as a symptom of our late capitalist contemporary society. He observes that whilst consumerist needs of self-gratification and self-marketing continue to be pursued, other deeper issues such as mass unemployment and precarity fissure the fabric of today’s society.

5 Dec 20141:00 pm | Theatre | £5 / Free to ICA Members

Institute of Contemporary Arts The Mall London SW1Y 5AH

for more information go here

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Neomaterialism write-up by Nimrod Kamer in The Evening Standard

The hot word on the scene was Neomaterialism. Neomaterialists, apparently, are the philosophers of fetish (not to be confused with Postmaterialists). Curator Joshua Simon has written a book about it. Walking around other Frieze parties and openings, you learn the following. First, symbols behave like materials, brands are commodities made of money. Second, MasterChef food on telly has no smell, no taste. Therefore it’s a commodity. Third, if you want to mimic earth creatures become a car. Fourth, shoplifting is about losing respect for an item, not about property gain. Fifth, if you go to Ikea, stay the night. Why bother carrying the home home if it already exists in the store? All useful stuff. 

See more here

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Boycott Lettuce

October 30, November 1-6-7, 2014

Duplex

Espace d'arts contemporains

Rue des Amis 9, 1201 Genève

Switzerland

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Group of Saudis changing two car wheels while driving on the two other wheels.

See Reza Negarestani's Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials

[jjssttxx]

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Anthropocene. A report

at the HKW, Berlin.

See more here

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A special session of the Social Theory Workshop discussing Noam Yuran's book 

WHAT MONEY WANTS

AN ECONOMY OF DESIRE 

Wednesday, October 22, 2014 

4:30-6:30pm 

Franke Institute for the Humanities 

“When I read this book, I am alternately thrilled and enlightened, confused and frustrated… You just might be reading one of the formative tracts of our time.” Keith Hart

What in everyday life is an obvious truth, namely, that in some sense or another, people want money— is basically unthinkable in economic terms. Herein lies the starting point for the main argument of this book. If desire for money in itself is rejected by economic thought, then an idea of money as on object of desire is a point of departure for an elaboration of a comprehensive alternative to contemporary economics. Conceiving the desire for money not as an pathological aberration (“greed”) but as fundamental economic reality necessitates a radial shift not only in concept of money but also in conceptions of what commodity is, what economic behavior is, and what the economy is. So, what would economics look like if it acknowledged desire for money?

Through the works of Thorstein Veblen, Georg Simmel, Max Weber and Karl Marx, a philosopher Noam Yuran in intellectually engaging manner shows in this book how money permeates economic reality, from finance to its spectacular double in our consumer economy of addictive shopping. Rich in colorful and accessible examples, from Charles Dickens (juxtapositing him with Adam Smith) to Reality TV, this outstanding book debunks the mainstream economics perspective and lays out a radically different economic ontology.

Read the introduction here

Read the preface by Keith Hart here

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NYC Book Launch: What Money Wants — An Economy of Desire | Panel Discussion with Author Noam Yuran

Book Launch: What Money Wants — An Economy of Desire | Panel Discussion with Author Noam Yuran

21 October 2014

06:30 PM - 08:30 PM

8th floor, 239 Greene Street, New York University, New York, NY 10003

The Cultures of Finance Group at the NYU Institute for Public Knowledge invite you to join us for the US launch and panel discussion of Noam Yuran’s What Money Wants: An Economy of Desire from Stanford University Press. This event will be hosted by the Department of Media, Culture and Communication at NYU Steinhardt, on the 8th floor of 239 Greene Street. In conversation with Noam are scholars Arjun Appadurai, Ben Kafka, Ben Lee, and Robert Wosnitzer. 

  Throughout the second half of the 20th century, economics has suppressed its long lasting association with philosophy. Its basic concepts, such as money, exchange, goods or capital, whose meanings were traditionally subject to philosophical controversies, appear today as purely technical terms. This technical form that economic language wears reflects a categorical philosophical resolution which has been made, and thus no longer appears philosophical. If that is the case, then answering the challenge to rethink economics, raised at the wake of recent financial crises, cannot stop short of reopening suppressed philosophical questions.

  What Money Wants addresses this challenge through the question of money. It attempts to conceptualize money as an object of desire. As this possibility is comprehensively rejected by contemporary economic thought, it necessitates a comprehensive reformulation of the philosophical foundations of economics. The book shows that such foundations can be found in the works of thinkers who were banished from the discipline as part of the crystallization of the contemporary orthodox framework, primarily Karl Marx, Thorstein Veblen, Max Weber and Georg Simmel.

  The book explores the philosophical implications of grounding money on desire as well as the new light it sheds on contemporary capitalism. It argues that we need to reread Marx and Veblen in order to better understand economic phenomena such as brand names, finance, consumer society and more.

  Noam Yuran is a lecturer at the Department of Politics and Government in Ben Gurion University in Israel and a research fellow at the Minerva Humanities Center at Tel Aviv University.