art

We lack creation. We lack resistance to the present!

(Deleuze and Guattari, 1994: 108)

The call for the Politics of Workers' Inquiry conference asked specifically for methodological contributions. I told a kind of ghost story about a tribe of phantoms who occasionally reappear. It concerned an organization called the Art Workers Coalition (AWC), formed in early 1969 after a spectacular protest in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Through its regular open meetings akin to the peoples' assemblies of recent times, the AWC aired grievances against museums and markets of art. A bill of particulars was drafted called the Ten Points.

If one would like to trace back to the beginnings of social sciences he or she should search for the objects or phenomena which first allowed these disciplines to anchor their initial concepts and guide their empirical research. For such phenomena serve both as objects of inquiry in their own right and as openings to investigations reaching far beyond the initial domain. Such phenomena were (which is quite uncontroversial) the division of labour and religion.

Introduction

Introduction

Introduction

Introduction

And if I don’t try to live like an artist, if I don’t want to work in such a way, being a PREY, AND IN SELF-EXPLOITATION! And if I don’t even think of self-actualizing myself constantly WHAT WILL HAPPEN THEN?! (theatre play by René Pollesch)

Introduction