[-empyre-] Unfolding Complicity

[gh hovagimyan]

gh comments below:

On Jan 4, 2010, at 9:01 AM, John Haber wrote:

> Want a moral or two to make sense of this? One is that in the past it
> was plausible to set a strategy to avoid complicity. You could set
> yourself apart from commerce, or you could embrace it as a storyline

My collaborative group Artists Meeting has a piece called Artists  
Meeting Art Machine. It's an automatic art machine that's made for  
art fairs. You purchase a token, put it in a slot and the machine  
randomly selects an art work either a drawing or a small object. The  
piece is actually a transactional art work that deals with the public  
and is specifically made to critic the market within the  
marketplace.    We recently exhibited this at the Pulse Art Fair in  
Miami and hope to travel it to other places.  Here's the url if  
anyone is curious.  -- http://artistsmeeting.org

This work does function just as John says. It also has some other  
"implicit" meanings.  The aesthetics of choice are taken away from  
the purchaser. It's amazing how people have been geared to walk into  
a gallery and snap into an aesthetic choice mode. They equate the art  
experience with shopping.  You know, do I like this? does this appeal  
to me? Does this reinforce my viewpoint of the world and my social  
position etc..  The Artists Meeting group mans the booth and explains  
to people who ask what the machine is that it's a DIY hack. They also  
explain that although choice is taken away the element of surprise is  
given to the purchaser.  It's an attempt to give the creative  
surprise and discovery that an artists finds naturally when making an  
artwork.   The piece is actually not about the objects it dispenses  
but about the whole situation.