The
idea for e-flux video rental started last summer when e-flux decided to get a
physical space. And since e-flux is an artist run information buro, to launch
the space with an art project seemed like the logical thing to do.
We are very interested in the role that is played by distribution and
circulation within the cycle of production and consumption. Being a little
skeptical and fearful of the state of the market nowadays –the transformation
of cultural capital into economical capital is seamless-, and inspired by Felix
Gonzalez Torres’ notion of viral replication, we set out to blur the edges of
the transactions, and complicate things a little bit. And since we are much
more interested in these notions than on the process of selecting the
participating works according to our individual taste, we decided to ask a
group of 46 international curators to send us each a selection of works –now
there are close to 60 participating selectors, and over 550 film and video art
works.
A recent article by Jorg Heiser published in frieze presents the question of
“what is to be done, for whom and how?” as a central one to the issue of
circulation and its aesthetic ramifications, and as a substitute to the older
and simpler “what is to be done” which proposed by Lenin in his 1902 pamphlet
on how to organize the working class. At the core, e-flux video rental is an
exercise in redistribution and empowerment, both for the public and the artist.
We wanted to create a practical “corporate model” that could function both within
the coded realm of art and art history, as well as without, in the everyday
–what Alan Kaprow dubs the “blurring of art and life”.
It is important for us to explain that this project is not a philanthropic
exercise, but rather a proposition for alternative transactions of cultural
capital. That there is a transaction that takes place every time a member of
the video rental takes out a video, aims to remind you that this is not a gift,
and is not without value. To think that accessibility undermines the value of a
work is to make no distinction between artwork and commodity, and that is the
equation that we want to upset.
Granted, this is a little bit like Xerox copies as opposed to hardcover,
leather bound book editions. They don’t look / sound / feel exactly like the
original experience intended by the artists, but are still better than a black
and white film still or the second hand knowledge transmitted by way of mouth
and magazine articles and reviews –which is sadly the way in which most film
and video art circulates; a perplexing thing if one takes into account the
inherent mass media quality of these artistic practices.
We have devised and arcane system similar to library cards in order keep track
of the rental process of the videos, and we like to track the geographical
expansion of the project… if you can imagine a map, with marking pins or little
red flags indicating the home of each and every renter, the size of the project
suddenly changes, and it is not only the smallish, spare storefront location,
but also every apartment where someone may have been watched, or coked to, or
had dinner to or fast forward or fallen asleep to any of the participating
videos.
In a sense the project resembles slightly the model of the Linux open source
operating system: There are 3 editions of the project, and we encourage the
hosting venues to add curators and artists to the growing list, and we
co-design with them a program of screenings…. So the project will keep growing
and moving and circulating and hopefully complicating things a little bit by
way of cultural contamination…until its scheduled death at the end of 2006,
when all the tapes will be disposed off.
Julieta Aranda and Anton Vidokle, Project Directors