The Creative Imperative: Creativity in the Readymade Century

For the third and final installment of the three-part lecture series The Creative Imperative, the Stedelijk Museum and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam are extremely delighted to welcome Dieter Daniels, professor of art history and media theory at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig, and an expert on Duchamp and -contemporary media art, and Amsterdam- based artist Jonas Lund, who in his work offers a sharp, but also often humorous critique of concepts of creativity and their instrumentalization in the art system.

THE CREATIVE IMPERATIVE

Some five years after the peak of the global financial crisis and the budgetary cutbacks by the Dutch government in the cultural field, it is now time to critically examine the consequences for creative practice and artistic production. These financial limitations have not just narrowed the space for autonomous work. In addition to cutting funding for both cultural institutions and universities, the government developed a program to stimulate research and innovation by identifying nine “top sectors.” When the arts find themselves represented in one of these sectors, if at all, it is usually under the label “creative industries,” which, according to the government, is “the most dynamic sector of the Dutch economy,” and also includes the fields of design, media, entertainment, fashion, gaming, and architecture. While this high valorization of creativity within society might sound encouraging at first sight, its economic motivations are both obvious and debatable.

To provide better insight into the diverging expectations and apprehensions connected to concepts and practices of creativity and artistic production, this lecture series aims to scrutinize what such practices in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries actually entail.

NOVEMBER 12, 2015: CREATIVITY IN THE READYMADE CENTURY

To conclude the series, we will devote our attention to the concept of the readymade, which fundamentally challenged ideas of artistic originality in an age of the neo-liberal flow of commodities. We will explore the fate of the readymade in contemporary society and visual culture, sustained by endless processes of appropriation, remediation, and remix on the one hand, and by the growing opportunities for individualization of consumer goods on the other.

Dieter Daniels will set out by discussing the notion of the readymade in its original meaning: mass-production of commodities. Originally, the term readymade was used to denote an off-the-shelf industrial product. As an example, in 1913, Henry Ford introduced the “moving assembly line” for standardized, low-cost motorcars, sold from stock instead of being produced on demand. Three years later, Marcel Duchamp, who had just arrived in the United States from Paris, first used the term  readymade for an artwork. Since then, the idea of the readymade has become central to the artistic practice of the twentieth and twenty-first century, because, in a world full of things, the act of choice becomes creative and individualistic, replacing the myth of the creatio ex nihilo. Daniels’ lecture will discuss the shifting relations of commodities, consumerism, creativity, and originality – with an outlook on the postmodern, re-contextualised neo-readymades of contemporary appropriation art.

Jonas Lund will give a lecture discussing some of his recent works, and how they explore notions of authorship, evaluation, and value creation within the contemporary art world and art production. From The Fear of Missing Out (2013), an exhibition in which the artist wrote a series of algorithms that created instructions for how to produce works of art, to Studio Practice (2014), in which the artist created his own factory for art production with an embedded evaluation system which was live-streamed over the Web. Lund often creates systems that question the value of the art object and how the surrounding network of the art world creates value. In a creative industries-inspired, app-centric cultural climate, wherein art is challenged to prove its usefulness and financial relevance, the possibility of mass produced, technology enabled art objects seems more appropriate than ever.

MORE ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Dieter Daniels (DE) is professor of art history and media theory at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig. His work focuses on media history and media art, the relation between art and music, as well as memorials and the culture of remembrance. He is the author and editor of monographs on Marcel Duchamp, George Brecht, and John Cage. He was co-founder of the Videonale Bonn (1984), and has been guest curator of exhibitions at the Museum für Gegenwartskunst Basel, the Museum Ludwig Cologne, the Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig, Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, and HMKV Dortmund. Publications include Duchamp und die anderen: Der Modellfall einer künstlerischen Wirkungsgeschichte in der Moderne (1992), Kunst als Sendung: Von der Telegrafie zum Internet (2002), Netpioneers 1.0: Contextualizing Early Net-based Art (2010), Audiovisuology (2010), and Sounds Like Silence. John Cage – 4'33" (2012).

Jonas Lund (NL/DE/SE/BR) is an artist who creates paintings, sculpture, photography, websites, and performances that incorporate data from his studies of art world trends and behavior. He earned an MA from the Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam (2013) and a BFA from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam (2009). He has had solo exhibitions at Steve Turner, Los Angeles (2015, 2014); Boetzelaer|Nispen, Amsterdam (2014); Showroom MAMA, Rotterdam (2013); and has had work included in numerous group exhibitions including at Eyebeam, New York; New Museum, New York; XPO Gallery, Paris; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Witte De With, Rotterdam; De Hallen, Haarlem; and the Moving Museum, Istanbul. His work has been written about in Artforum, Artslant, Rhizome, Huffington Post, Furtherfield and Wired.

PRACTICAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE LECTURE SERIES

The Creative Imperative lecture series consists of three evenings in the fall of 2015 which can be individually attended. Information about the whole series can be found online:

stedelijk|forum, Sept 10, 2015
The Creative Imperative: Creative Mind vs. Creative Industries
Language: English
Location: Stedelijk Museum, Teijin Auditorium
More info 

stedelijk|forum, Oct 8, 2015
The Creative Imperative: Commodification & “Entkunstung”
Language: English
Location: Stedelijk Museum, Teijin Auditorium
More info 

stedelijk|forum, Nov 12, 2015
The Creative Imperative: Creativity in the Readymade Century
Language: English
Location: Stedelijk Museum, Teijin Auditorium
See link above for tickets

CREDITS

The Creative Imperative lecture series is a collaboration between the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (Britte Sloothaak, assistant curator) and the Vrije University Amsterdam (Katja Kwastek / Sven Lütticken), within the research cluster “Paradigms of Creativity” of CLUE+, VU’s Interfaculty Research Institute for Culture, History, and Heritage.