Inside/Outside?

The Art of
Globalisation
Jon Cairns
Unit 1 lecture 2.11.18
Preamble: My walk with Annie and Beth

EcoSex walking tour of Kassel,

Documenta 14, Kassel, June 2017
Dirty Sexecology Show (2009- )
https://www.youtube.com/w
atch?v=FToQ6fNt7jY
What is globalisation? From brand identities to postmodern
Empire (a quick run through bits of Fredric Jameson, Naomi
Klein, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri)
McDonalds sign, Times Square, NY
Benetton advertisements (c.1989-92)
 Nike Town, London (opened 1999)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uI0i
tS3gQFU
Allan Sekula, Waiting for Tear Gas 1999–2000
Jeff Koons, ad for Art in America, November 1988; Takashi
Murakami, collaboration with Louis Vuitton (2003-2015)
Brian Jungen, Warriors 2018 (Liverpool Biennial)
The outside inside – biennials and the ‘biennialisation’ of art
Clockwise from top L: Russian Pavillion, Venice Biennale 2007; installation,
Doris Salcedo, installation at Istanbul Biennial 2003; Thomas Bayrle,
Documenta XIII, Kassel 2012; Masako Yasumoto, Shanghai Biennial 2012
Documenta Halle, Kassel 2017
Documenta 14, 2017 - Marta Minujin, Parthenon of Books,
1983/2017, Friedrichsplatz, Kassel
Hiwa K, When We Were Exhaling Images, 2017, Friedrichsplatz,
Kassel
Ibrahim Mahama, Check Point Sekondi Loco. 1901–2030. 2016–
2017; performance, Syntagma Square, Athens 2017
• One of the immediate effects of globalisation has been the so-
called internationalisation of the circuits and circulations of
cultural and artistic production. This is an extremely tricky
phenomenon, because it’s now ideologically represented to
us as if there is a frictionless cultural universe in which
anybody can get on the tramline anywhere, any work of art
will be seen anywhere. This reductive model presents
globalisation as a circuit without power, which is very
mysterious. In reality, the moment you look closely at those
circuits, you see massive disparities of access, of visibility,
huge yawning gaps between who can and can’t be
represented in any effective way.
• Stuart Hall, (in discussion with Michael Hardt), in Gilane
Tawadros ed. (2004) Changing States: Contemporary Art and
Ideas in an Era of Globalisation, inIVA, p.134
 “a frictionless cultural universe” (Hall)
L: Annie Pootoogook, Dr Phil 2006; R: Haegue Yang, Long Neck
Woman Upside Down 2016 (Liverpool Biennial 2018)
 “any work of art will be seen anywhere” (Hall)
(Problems of translation?): Xu Bing, Book from the Sky 1987-91
“huge yawning gaps between who can and can’t be represented
in any effective way”(Hall)
Banu Cennetoğlu, The List, Liverpool Biennial 2018
 “massive disparities of access” (Hall)
Jota Castro, Discrimination Day, Palais de Tokyo 2005
Misery tourism? Jim Goldberg, Greece. Lavrio, 2005; Ursula
Biemann, Deep Weather 2013
 Mohamed Bourouissa L: Untitled 2014 (re his film Horse Day
2013) R: Resilience Garden, Liverpool Biennial 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87UJ1Cf
JH4g
Resistance is Futile
Santiago Sierra, 250cm line tattoed on 6 remunerated persons, Havana,
Cuba 1999; 7 forms of 60x60x600cm each constructed to be held
perpendicular to a wall, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane Nov. 2010
 Santiago Sierra, 3000 holes of 180x50x50cm each, Vejer de la
Frontera, Cadiz, Spain, July 2002. installation shot + detail,
Hardcore: Towards a New Activism, Palais de Tokyo, Paris 2003
• There is no alternative to this system, or way
to dodge it, change it, or question it…

• Santiago Sierra (2002), interviewed by

Pamela Echeverría, Flash Art vol. 34 no.225
July-Sept 2002, p.103
Resistance is Futile?

critical art practice in a

globalised age
activism (and fun)
L: Mejor Vida Corp/Minerva Cuevas, Del Montte 2002
R: Mejor Vida Corp/Minerva Cuevas & Jose Ochoa, Mascot for
Frontera.tk/third world 2002
Mejor Vida Corp (Corporation for a Better Life), est.1998. Top
R: MVC cleaning service; bottom R: fake student ID card
Minerva Cuevas, S.COOP, for The Street project,
Whitechapel Art Gallery, 2009
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zB9NFR
WREec
• @ 18.40 mins
Steve McQueen, Western Deep 2002
filmed in the TauTona mines, South Africa

• http://www.criticalcommons.org/Me
mbers/andydancer/clips/western-
deep#
Adbusters
Jota Castro The Flag 1998; Jota Castro, Extracomunitari T-Shirts
2002 (“bougnoul lover”)
La Pocha Nostra, Ex-Centris (2003-present)
La Pocha Nostra, Ex-Centris (2003-present)
Liverpool Biennial 2018 - L: Kevin Beasley, Your face is / is not
enough 2016; R: Abbas Akhavan, Variations on a Ghost 2017
Mikhael Subtozky & Patrick Waterhouse, Windows,
Ponte City (Johannesberg) 2008-10
L: Annie Pootoogook, Bear by the window 2004; R: Dale Harding,
2018
Wangechi Mutu, She’s Got the Whole World in Her 2015
 Cao Fei, Whose Utopia 2006

• https://vimeo.com/76026916
Mejor Vida Corp., fake student ID card
Golden Arches Hotel, Zurich
Guerilla Girls
Guerilla Girls
Takashi Murakami, collaboration with Louis Vuitton (2003-2015)
 Postmodern Empire: Introducing Globalisation
Clockwise from top L: Metro Centre, Gateshead; Freemont St, Las
Vegas; International Village, Chinatown, Vancouver; MBK, Bangkok
Echigo-Tsumari Triennial, Niigata Prefecture, Japan
est. 2000

• http://www.echigo-
tsumari.jp/eng/about/
Echigo-Tsumari Triennial 2006: Grizedale Arts, ‘7 Samurai’
project, Toge, Niigata, Japan
Grizedale Arts, Echigo-Tsumari Triennial project 2006
http://www.grizedale.org/projects/seven.samur
ai
Grizedale Arts/Yangjiang Group, Coliseum of the
Consumed, Frieze Art Fair 2012
Ai Weiwei