2014-
As the director of a public-service art institution, I declare my intention to withdraw from participating in or contributing to the public programs of art fairs. From now on, I will not participate in panels and talks, produce exhibitions and screenings, serve as an advisor, participate in selection committees, sit on juries, or provide similar services for the organizations behind art fairs.
Over the past years, art fairs have come to absorb and occupy many of the functions previously expected of the public realm in the name of broadening their services. Yet the costs of this incorporation have been profound. Not only is access to these events limited and based on the ability to pay, but how they are seamlessly added to an essentially private dealing floor serves to augment the authority of the market as the only arbiter of success. These ‘discursive’ events reduce the whole discourse around art to marketing for tradable goods. They normalize a context where art is presented as an extension of super-rich desires and erase the boundaries between public usefulness and private benefit that allowed art to flourish as an expression of the collective experience and social desire up to the recent past. This situation is intolerable for me. I no longer wish to assist in defining art simply as an ultra-high-value investment opportunity or to provide intellectual servicing for the chosen few in a frictionless zone of exception.
I wish to advocate for a better balance between private ownership and what society shares or wishes to hold in common, promote less public cynicism towards art and artists, and address the potentiality of art to offer different ways of connecting societies and thinking about the world around us.
Vasıf Kortun
vasıf kortun 