The idea of enabling resistant narratives to neoliberalism through dialogical and participatory works, steadily informs the agenda of perennial large-scale exhibitions of contemporary art (biennials) around Europe and the world. Somewhat paradoxically, the proliferation of such shows since the early 1990s depends on this very neoliberal model that values culture for its measurable outcomes. By discussing such predicaments of the ''biennial phenomenon,'' this article lays out its ambivalences and potentials within the current political-economic context. Moreover, through looking at the case of the 7th Berlin Biennale (2012), a controversial exhibition that prioritized activism and the ''real effects'' of art in society, the article suggests that such biennial complexities could be better addressed through ethnographic methodologies.
A key term in discussions on the nature of cultural work is the concept of ‘autonomy’, or ‘relative autonomy’, according to which cultural workers are capable of realizing themselves in the processes of work. This article wishes to problematize this idea by examining the quotidian reality of cultural workers in the field of contemporary art in Greece during the current economic crisis. The analysis is based on ethnographic fieldwork, focusing on how the positive characteristics of cultural work are inscribed in workers’ experiences through their participation in ReMap, a contemporary art event that takes places biannually in Athens and is tightly interwoven with processes of gentrification. I argue that relative autonomy is neither a given nor a state where the cultural worker linearly progresses. Within the context of the larger cultural and economic implications of neoliberalism and its crisis, it is rather an ideal they are striving for, often through highly alienating conditions, in a field dominated by competition, voluntarism, low salaries, precarity and absence of collective bargaining.
This special issue brings together ethnographic scholarship to explore the interlinking of diverse personal, social and larger institutional forms in and through which artistic value emerges. Rather than being inherent in the formal features of art objects or merely a discursive construct, value as craft signifies an arena in which beliefs, ideologies, and histories interweave with art practices, events, and materialities. The articles included in this issue, then, highlight both the constructed and performative aspects of artistic values through a common focus on ethnography and a shared emphasis on temporality, practice, and institutional forms. Accordingly, art is a process both craftedcomposed of judgements and social interactionand craftingable to individually or collectively mobilise and enable desiring investments in its capacity as art. The interdisciplinary effort at hand retains the sociological ethos and political implications of social constructionism, while looking at how acts of valuation enable affective, agential and aesthetic responses.
This article draws attention to one of the neglected aspects of trolling in current literature: its potential to stand as a form of cultural politics that may inform counter-hegemonic challenges to prevalent ideologies. Rather than merely perceiving trolling as a threat to normality or a proof of the internet’s dystopic character, we look at the ways that certain trolls employ the method of ‘subversive affirmation’ for effectively addressing current events, and to mock hegemonic ideological currents, lifestyles and contexts in Greece today. We argue that the trolls we study are positioned against the hegemonic neoliberal framework and its attempts to achieve consensus on the supposed necessity of austerity reforms and the maintenance of the euro currency, as well as against a prevailing conservativism and nationalism that blend with the broader neoliberal assemblage of discourses, policies and practices in Greek society. By developing a thematic analysis on selected Facebook trolls’ posts, we discuss the ways that trolls function politically, transgressing the limits of the hegemonic discourses and identities, as well as the norms of mediated dialogue, deliberation and critique. The key mechanisms deployed by the trolls are the overlapping practices of over-identification and humour. This article suggests seeing trolling as a form of cultural production that not only damages, but redirects desires, produces identifications and instils passionate investments in political ideologies.
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