Art in the Age of Economic Collapse

A View from the Bottom

Jefree Shalevnullspace gallery

So we find ourselves in the 21st century. In America. It is a time and place which we imagined would be nothing less than sublime. The culmination of millions of years of cultural evolution, such is our destiny. Standing on the shoulders of the giants of art and science, having scaled the forbidding cliffs of technology and philosophy, have we not surpassed the mythical gods we once held in awe, who we once feared so desperately? Of course we have!

Image from Matt Allisonʼs installation, A Future Memorynullspace gallery, March 2010

Photo by Polly Davis

And yet permeating our lives is an unshakeable dis-ease, a nagging sense that we are self-deluded in our greatness, that the culture we have amassed is a millstone necklace we can neither afford nor take off. It is in these times which we find ourselves. In Jacksonville, no less, the anti-phoenix, which rose out of the ashes of a great fire, only to purposefully drain and isolate its once prosperous core out of fear and racism and greed. And somehow, I present this to you as the good news, because out of this bewildering predicament, I see emerging, great opportunity: for art, for this city, for all of us.

If one looks back to the gaudy, heady days of the 1980s and ʻ90s, one will see an art world dominated by New York and the European capitals, by the mega shows at gigantic public museums, by entrenched galleries and their stable of stars. Commerce and Art become interchangeable and indistinguishable. The past existed so that we might steal it, so that we might mock it, so that we might paper over it with our witty po-mo slogans. Contemporary Art became the propagation of an inside joke, totally self-referential, and designed to shock and annoy the general public.

Robert MapplethorpeʼSelf Portrait (1988) superimposed with Andres Serranoʼs Piss

Christ (1989)

Whatʼs happened in the intervening years is nothing less than earth shattering.

The rise of the internetʼs pervasiveness along with ubiquitous mobile technology, makes each of us both a media outlet and non-stop consumers of this new micro-media. It becomes much easier to find others who share any interest, no matter how arcane, or how far to the fringe it may be. Communities form without the constraint of place, which makes centers of culture an outdated notion.

Then thereʼs the unprecedented globalization of markets. Our interwoven financial institutions, caught holding an enormous bag of toxic “assets”, have left stress cracks in the foundations of the western economies.

The local expression of the these two forces at work is where the opportunity I mentioned earlier arises. It is a well known phenomena whereby artists, always in search of cheap large studio space, find each other in the discarded lofts and warehouses of our cities. Street art, provocative art, the art of an underclass, pushes its way up like weeds through cracks in the sidewalk. Whether it be on the sides of buildings or shown in the tiny spaces that function as galleries in these blighted barrios, what we have is graffiti, personal utterances, which somehow coalesce into a language for the independent, for the dispossessed, for those without commercial expectation or reward. And it is through the vibrant network of interconnectedness of our meme creating viral culture that these expressions take root and spread like kudzu through the mainstream and commercially driven landscape.

What we have is something Urban China Magazineʼs Editor-In-Chief, Jiang Jun refers to as informalism, a process of re-envisioning, of remaking our structured environments by overlaying personal and transformative layers to our object spaces and to the narrative of our buildings and our lives. Informalism is a way of reconfiguring reality. It is the way we, as individuals, construct and respond to our environment, and it is this impulse to appropriate, to re-interpret and to internalize, freed from the constraints of the market, which offers the most immediate way to communicate our private landscape, and becomes a map of our personal alienation. Ironically, it is this alienation which crosses all barriers of place and race and class which unites us today.

Image from Urban China Magazine

Justinʼs StoryKurt Polkey from his installation at

nullspaceApril 2010

Informalism mirrors the growing participatory experience we find in our online lives. Art is more than artifacts, more than a painting which can just as easily hang in your home as in the Whitney Museum. It becomes an experience that unfolds differently for each viewer. It occurs uniquely depending on place and those who view it, manipulate it, and ultimately overlay their personal distortions upon it.

The Downtown Vision experiment called Off the Grid, which takes advantage of the moribund local economy, allows us the opportunity to bring this kind of art to Jacksonville. When the sale of artifacts is beside the point, artists and viewers are free to make art together. This is nothing less than a paradigm shift from art objects to art subjects.

The Double-Taker Snout by Golan Levin which reacts to its viewers with surprise.

Dialtones - A TelesymphonyGolan Levin, Greagory Shakar, Scott Gibbons, Yasmin Sohrawardy, Joris Gruber, Erich Semiak, Gunther Schmidl, Joerg Lehner, and Jonathan Feinberg

The choreographed ringing of the audienceʼs own mobile phones produces this concert performance.

Interactive installations at nullspace by Greta Songe (above) and Max Wood (left).Photos by Polly Davis

When we are engaged with art, and when the art becomes dependent on our engagement, our experience is deepened and made personal. This is ultimately a political act devoid of the usual polemic and activist battering we endure daily through media and advertising and the interminable machinations of political systems.

It is political because it turns upside down the way art is perceived, consumed and created. With this opportunity for do-it-yourself galleries and installations, we are able to unleash art which truly mirrors our own lives, which helps us better understand the ways in which our lives are enriched through our shared experiences. When commerce and apathy collide like elemental particles, we get enormous energy released in the process. This is the promise of right here, right now.