Live Blogging Stil(ls) Part 5

"Where pathos rules, the ruling class has vanished from the scene."

There are two spectacular posters in the back room of the gallery. This one is black and red and grey and has fragments of essays on the relationship between the photographic image and capital. Next to a portrait of a miner, there is a stern condemnation of the Magnum photographic agency for its contribution to a tradition that privileges the power of the emotive image. Copies of pages from old newspapers aimed at "the workers" are accompanied by statements by the journalists involved in their creation.

The split between the two sides of the poster is clear: one side is a critique of the dominant photographic approach, the other a brief history of resistance. Black versus red: but the text in the black is frequently dragged into incomprehensibility by its reliance on a specialised jargon.

"The crisis of feminism is not incidental to a matriarchal symbolism of moral interdependency..." "No mutual and reciprocal strategy is either required or envisaged..." "The visual rhetoric of consumer sovereignty is surprisingly pervasive..."

If specific quotations are dense, the overall impact is more expressive. The contrast between the charming and urgent workers' newspapers and the iconic power of the capitalist images makes the argument that an image is not neutral. Even documentary reportage has an aesthetic and beneath that aesthetic there is a political philosophy. If taste is preferring one style over another, this poster encourages the belief that taste is not merely a matter of aesthetics. Your aesthetics are your ethics.

What, then, do I make of my own dislike for the presence of specialist language? In rejecting the phrases and words so common in left-wing dialectic, am I expressing my own faith in the apparently innocent language of capitalism? Elsewhere, I have argued for more clarity, abandoning words that are general and picking the more precise. Isn't the language of the Marxist much the same as that of the scientist, finding exactly the word that matters?

Stills. Economy. 4. Live Blog

I am opposite a large photograph of Tracey Emin. She has her legs open and is pulling all money into her lap. I am cross-legged and typing a reply to her.

The note to the photograph suggests that Emin is making a comment on the relationship between motherhood and unpaid labour: since her work often deals with uncomfortable areas of sexuality and female identity, the open legs and the exposed flesh are partially reminders of erotic photograph but also place this within her general interest in the way that women are represented.

However, I seem to remember Emin banging on about paying too much tax under Labour and having increasingly conservative opinions about poverty. This might be a comment on the way that motherhood is never factored into capitalism's assessments of cost, or it might be Emin's version of Harry Enfield's Loadsamoney character.

A larger photo on the next wall: Tabrizian's portrait of many (all male) city types standing in a foyer. They all look very smart and by capturing them in stillness, they have a sense of thoughtfulness and serenity in their postures. They are waiting for something - the picture was taken in 2008, so maybe they are waiting for the economic crash they helped to organise. The lack of connection between the men - no-one looks directly at anyone else - is sinister. Against Emin's consciously disordered picture, the stability and organisation of the male business boys is disturbing.

Whatever else Emin is doing, she is doing it with passion. The city crew appear disconnected from any recognisable emotion or community.

Male and female represent two polarities. On the one wall we have sex (legs apart), energy and individuality. On the other we have a group, smart clothes and seriousness.

A third image joins the conversation: Rosier took a shot of three women in an airport beneath an advertising poster (that contains three women). The gap between the real and the marketing version does not need to be stressed. In the advert, it's all sexy bodies and fun. In the real world, there's waiting about and comfortable clothes.

All versions of the way that the body is clothed by capitalism.

Stills. Economy. Live Blog. 3

At the back of the gallery, there is a collection of postcard sized images. Between a photograph of a graffito ("let's make lots of money" in black spray paint) and an advert for investing in Eastern Poland (a beseeching child looks up beneath the caption "what will you tell your child when he asks whether you invested..."), there is a screen-shot of a Facebook newsfeed. Barclays Bank is asking "is it a home if you don't own it?"

There's probably enough in that sentence to last the rest of my review. First of all, a bank has decided to institute a major philosophical discussion about the nature of "home." I'd rather that was left to professors who might be able to provide intellectual support for the dialogue without trying to sell me contents insurance every five minutes.

I am going to assume two possible answers. Not knowing is a valuable position, but it doesn't allow me to follow the consequences of a solid response.

If it isn't a home unless I own it, that opens up all the questions about financial instability, the dangers of renting (will the landlord suddenly evict me?), the idea that without ownership, the householder is not allowed to call anywhere home, that they are merely occupying and have no sense of location and... and...

If it is a home anyway... what does that mean a home is? How do I establish a home in a rented accommodation?

But I thought of myself as very excluded by that question. Since I don't own the house I live in, I am reminded of my position as an economic outsider.

This is going to be a troubling exhibition.

Live Blog @ The Stills (2): It's the Economy, Stupid

Some Live Blog, this: I am starting off in the basement (the staff at Stills are charming and are having a fascinating conversation that I am rudely listening to, taking notes to steal their ideas about objectivity). I have a coffee, I have an internet connection and I have the curator's introduction to read.

The scale of the exhibition is vast: they have some serious names on the walls and the screens, and the theme serious. I have decided that I need to start off by examining the approach of the curators. My usual approach, to just pile in and work out the intention later, is not going to work. I need to find a path, and I am willing to let the curators guide me.

"What is changing is our relationship to the economy as a necessary response to the economy’s own transformation. In the unforgettable vision of Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto, all that is solid melts into air – yet again. The end of the Cold War, symbolically represented by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, generated a number of ‘turns’ in the context of contemporary art: turns to collectivism, to the making of archives, to social bonds, relations and communities, to labour, to biopolitics and the document, to struggle. This restless quest for the right ‘tag’ has been one way of saying that contemporary art is, finally, becoming new as it focuses its efforts on the exploration of the material conditions that make reality what it is."

In other words, the art selected is not content to sit on the sidelines and enjoy itself with games of taste or style. It wants to examine how it fits into the world, what are the economic conditions that allow art to find itself on the walls of the gallery - or perhaps in the stylish bedroom and boardroom of those who can afford to buy it.

"Post-1989 art has developed new strategies to reveal capitalism’s new frontier: ourselves."

Back when capitalism had an ideology worth the battle, it was more concerned with conquering new territory. Winning nations for the market was the prize: then the USSR collapsed and communism no longer gave capitalism a good enough battle. So it turned on the consumers, trying to conquer their minds, shape their behaviour. 

Like the way that I have tried to turn myself into a brand. The VileArts is not Gareth K Vile, but a brand that people buy. Lucky it is so cheap.

The curators note that art from Eastern Europe is far more explicit in its interest in this internalised oppression - probably because the transition from communism to capitalism happened relatively recently, and was very abrupt. In the UK, capitalism has been knocking about for most of the past millennium in various forms. In Poland, it turned up less than three decades ago. 

They add that many of the artists are women, because the process of capitalism's advance are often gendered - based on ideas of male and female that are frequently static and even old fashioned.  

So, I am expecting the exhibition to reveal the human impact of economic decisions: not simply in the form of shocking images of exploited workers, but describing the most subtle effects of capitalism on personal identity.

Economy at Stills (Live Blog (1))

My natural antagonism to Marxists aside (not so much to the theories of the bearded expert on Lucretius, more towards those who would use his analysis as the foundation of the only possible strategies against capitalism), Economy is a big exhibition that can't be ignored. I am sitting in the basement of the Stills Gallery, preparing myself for a few hours of live blogging. On an exhibition that is so important, it is reaching across two cities. 

And it persuaded me to come to Edinburgh, despite the snow.

My first stop is Netherworld Magazine. Stills is all about the photography, and this is the place to check out contemporary documentary photography and video art. Unlike the work I am more naturally comfortable to discuss, this website showcases images that are consciously engaged in a political and social discourse (I am all about the aesthetics...). It leads me into the exhibition which, even as I glimpsed it as I made for the resource room, is clearly locating art within a broader context.

From the guide to Economy.

In the 21st century, does the economy provide the ground zero of our sense of self? And what does this experience of a life dominated by  economic relations feel or even look like?