There is all knowledge in the world to solve all of the world’s problems - about an art practice

By Kenneth A. Balfelt, visual artist

Art is a profession like any other. But art offers another line of approach to a given problem. The paradigm is different. Art produces other forms of reflections and solutions out of the ethical and aesthetic considerations and scientific understandings that make themselves felt within the world of art. This implies that the (physical) solution produced by the artist becomes a different solution than one produced within any other profession.

The development aid system distributed $29 billion in 2001 to the developing countries.
In the same year, the developing countries paid off $139 billion in debts!

(David Sogge: ‘Development aid from poor to rich’, Le Monde Diplomatique, September 2004)

Knowledge is good and interesting. We are all affected by it. Theory is an approach to knowledge. But the problem in the world is not a lack of knowledge, but lack of actions towards solutions. As a member of the global community, the Danish society, and my local community, I think about how I can contribute to the development. Not development in terms of the capitalist product and service innovation, but development understood as a process aiming towards creating spaces for more community and love. We could call it, ‘a better World’.

The Power of Representation
When I was studying at Goldsmiths College (art academy) in London I had a troubled relationship with the concept representation. The act of making art as something that does not produce, but merely refers to something else, seemed like a displacement activity to me. Nor does it appeal to me to use symbols and metaphors, as it is a way of using language (the visual, the spoken as well as the written) that is not concrete, but rather relies on more or less prearranged references that we must know in order to understand the implied meaning. Working visually allows us to put into motion altogether different layers of emotions and thoughts. When I create an injection room as a work of art as a visual contribution in a sociopolitical debate, then I know that the physically present space has a power. Power understood as a force of influence on social and political processes.

The social inheritance is a myth… 90% af children from disadvantaged families get by without having the same problems as their parents… among drug abusers a majority of their parents are not drug users… Our view is that it is too convenient of politicians and social workers that by referring to the social inheritance they can pass on the resposibility to the parents, and thereby downplay society’s responsibility towards vulnerable groups… Even though one has grown up under very socially disadvantaged circumstances, most people do well because the social uplift is much more significant than the social inheritance.

(‘The myth of the social inheritance debunked’, interview with Morten Ejrnæs by Andreas Hansen, Hus Forbi issue 38, February-March 2005)

Art as Language of Dialogue
Rather than using metaphors and symbolic language, I attempt what we may call a ‘language of dialogue’, where the purpose is to exchange and develop something together. By choosing a language of dialogue that makes use of another strategy, I also choose a language that produces something else in the meeting with my artwork. I am no longer in a discourse of ‘having to know in order to understand’, or what we may call an art codex, but try to change my position into another way of working with art as communication. Sometimes, this ‘other language’ will be a special language of the profession with which I work in a given context – e.g. the language used by nurses or social workers and which they understand and can relate to. But this does not mean that this form of art language leaves the art discourse – perhaps on the contrary, because in my experience a need arises, say, to discuss the relationship of language to the boundaries of art.

We – the representatives of the United States of America, assembled in General Congress, in the name and by authority of the good people of these colonies, and appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world as to the rightness of our cause – do solemnly declare and formally announce that these united colonies are, and by rights should be Free and Independent States, with all allegiance to the British Crown voided, and that all political ties between them and the State of Great Britain are, and should be, totally dissolved; and as Free and Independent States, they have the full power to wage war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and undertake all other activities and matters which independent States may do as a matter of right.

(The United States Declaration of Independence from 1776,
Lettre Internationale issue 05, October 2004)

By making use of another art language I also move into certain structures in society where the rules of the game are different. But as within the domain of art, it is interesting to me to deconstruct these rules and underlying structures. To understand how conditions and situations are structured and what they contain in order to understand what is interesting, ethical and beneficial. It is by way of this analysis made by someone from the outside, in this case an artist with a particular method and perspective on a high (art-)professional level, that it sometimes becomes possible to stimulate a change in how we do things in society. An example of an interesting result for me is when I hear Sophie Hæstorp Andersen (MP, the Social Democrats) stating that she is no longer just thinking that we should have an injection room, but also about what specific look it should have. That is, a qualification of a so-called damage-reducing initiative in the work for better conditions for drug abusers.

Racism is a weapon of mass destruction

(Poster in the city)

As with metaphors and symbols I also do not find it fruitful for my practice to see art ‘as a mirror of society’. A mirror is nothing but a representation. It doesn’t produce anything. It can stimulate awareness about the state of things and can thereby be an analysis. But that is not my objective. I use an analysis in order to understand how I should produce a contribution to society.

… In 1919, an anti-imperialist wind arose in Afghanistan and the tribal confederacy accepted Amanullah as the king. He was a modernizer and admirer of Kemal Atatürk. His wife Soraya was a proto-feminist. The nationalist intellectuals in Amanullah’s circle prepared a draft constitution. It included universal adult franchise. If it had been implemented, women in Afghanistan would have obtained the vote before their sisters in Britain and the West. The reason it wasn’t implemented was that the British, via an experienced agent – T. E. Lawrence – stoked up a few tribes, paid them, and told them that women were being encouraged to become prostitutes. The British themselves then intervened to topple Amanullah.

(Tariq Ali: ‘Tortured Civilizations: Islam and the West
– In the brutal aftermath of the war on Iraq,
a genuine clash of civilizations has emerged.
Could it have been avoided?’,
Lettre Internationale issue 05, October 2005)

This leads me to my relationship with the art institution. I am completely dependent on the art institution and in particular the art discourse. It is only because there is an art which works with the visual language and which creates a discourse around this research, that the practice in which I work can be characterized as art. It’s because I make use of, as mentioned above, its paradigm, method and frame of reference, because I’m educated in it and move within it, that I can professionally claim that it is art, as method and solution, when I make what we can call functional models and solution proposals.

Stop the ghettoisation north of Copenhagen.

(Poster in the city)

The Production of Non-Knowledge
In order to specify this I would like briefly to address another of the significant and leading, but for me inapplicable ideas about art: that it be a sin, even an act of crime, to copy art. A criterion for success for my art is that it is copied! When I comment and make concrete proposals to other forms of municipal institutional building in the projects ‘Protection Room – Injection Room for Drug Addicts’ and ‘Radical Horizontality – Interior Design of Home for the Men’ it is as a painting or an attempt to cause ‘repercussions’ in society. But unlike paintings, at least the ones I’ve seen, I try to create proposals to or models for solutions. It means that my art moves into the funtional. These ideas are meant as more or less concrete proposals to society, and may be used my everyone. At the same time I am tempted to copy from other artists – I find it absurd that good ideas can’t be shared and implemented for the benefit of the community.

But at the same time my projects have the additional layer that puts thoughts into motion and calls for the reflection that for me is the domain of art. We can call this an artistic twist. That is, something that makes use of art’s visual space and possibilities. The act of embedding elements of a language beyond the spoken/written language, one with other capabilities. One way of addressing this is art as ‘the production of non-knowledge’. This concept, coined by Sarat Maharaj(1), articulates that art produces a non-knowledge, that is, it produces something that isn’t knowledge in the sense as what we usually refer to, but which produces another form of knowledge. A knowledge that operates structurally differently.

Charles Esche talks about a form of art that works with creating ‘modest proposals’(2), something with which to a fair extent I can also relate my artwork. This means something as models, though not to be understood metaphorically or symbolically, but rather as discreet proposals to or models for how a given problematic can be approached. Modest in the sense of size or scope, because the resources and opportunities for art are limited, but not modest in vigour and virtue.

A break with the capital valuation
Somewhere inbetween, that is between art as a structurally different form of language and art as directly producing solution proposals, is where I find it interesting to navigate. With these poles and partners I try to produce an opposition or an alternative to liberal capitalism. Liberal capitalism is not a definitive problem, but as the only navigation within our present-day society, it is too limited. To have money among other things is about spending time deciding what to buy. A counter example can be found in the former GDR (German Democratic Republic), where you would place a call to say that you needed a new floor, and so you’d be supplied with the red linoleum one. Price and quality was known and completely transparent, and all prices were indeed the same in all of GDR (just imagine never having to compare prices anymore!). Thereby you could spend your time on other matters. As an isolated example I find this interesting. It means reducing the liberal capitalist focus to a focus on other subjects, like love and community. How I make use of this idea is to choose to see other aspects of a given context. That means to nurture and address aspects that put other conditions into play. Conditions that can provide other substance to life than the newest Nokia mobile phone!

Up until 2003, 500 billion mobile phones were sold… In the US alone, every year people discard 40-50 million mobile phones.

(‘The wonderful world of the mobile phone’ by Dan Schiller, Le Monde Diplomatique, February 2005)

I also see a problem in reducing art to market items. To observe artists and gallerist with Euro-blue eyes on art fairs is to watch the selling out of art’s potential. (Just as selling to one rich, usually elderly white man, is uninteresting to what I think the art I make should do.) When art, an artwork, gets an market value, a price attached to it, it is to a large extent placed alongside all other consumer items, and placed within the liberal capitalist product-need-orientation instead of preserving it as producer of ‘non-knowledge’. I do not sell my art. Since I made this decision – which serves to strengthen the structural objective I have for my art – I have however decided to sell to museums, because they do not resell the artwork. Hereby I avoid that my art turns into objects of sale and investment, but at the same time that it reaches an audience that is the sole justification of art’s existence, and I make a little money and ensure a discourse around my work. Not to mention that it feels great to leave large quantities of ‘material’ in safe hands.

Money does nothing by itself. They are a tool. And you are the one who decides how the money should work while they are in the bank. If you choose Merkur as your financial institute you are promoting a sustainable development of society. In Merkur as a depositing client you have influence on what your money is invested in. At the same time we do both an economic and societal, environmental, social and cultural assessment before we lend out money to a project. More than 80% of our total loans goes to three main areas:

Ecological:
Organic and biodynamic agriculture, sustainable energy,
sustainable production and trade, ecological construction.

Social:
Eco communes and collectives experimenting with new forms of living-, building-, and ownership, alternative forms of energy and resource saving measures, homes for mentally and physically challenged children and adults, as well as residences and drop-in-centres for socially vulnerable children and youth.

Cultural:
Free schools and kindergartens, folk high schools, seminaries, cultural houses, theatres and musical venues.

(Merkur Bank’s web site: www.merkurbank.dk)

1. Sarat Maharaj: ‘Avidya: “Non-Knowledge” Production in the Scene of Visual-Arts Practice’, Ute Meta Bauer (red.): Education, Information, Entertainment. Current Approaches on Higher Artistic Education. Wien: edition selene, 2001.
2. Charles Esche: ‘Modest proposals or why “the choice is limited to how the wealth is to be squandered”’, Berlin Biennale 2 (Berlin: Oktagon, 2001), pp. 22-27.