Though we still live within a sort of cultural mandate defined by the progressivist historian's legacy, a mandate which is also that of the avant-garde, we have also become more familiar with the nature of its destruction. From this familiarity, new content and modes of storytelling have developed that relocate our attention to alternative economies, alternative means of distribution as moments of freedom or places to redefine our responsibility with one another. In fact, it might be argued that many of the people Lippard included in her compendium of conceptual art (note) were actually focused on the art object, adapting it into new forms which could allow for a pursuit of life exchange.
The above small exhibition includes five different artists, each of whom could be discussed as containing alternative economies as part of the distribution or content of their work. In some cases, to discuss their work as a process of exchange and interaction is to speak of their relations to others, of their ideas concerning responsibility and community. In other aspects, it is to refer to the act of simply being alive, a sort of existential statement and means of empowerment through an acceptence of one's life into art and art into life.
Ben Kinmont
(note) Lucy Lippard, Six Years: the dematerialization of the art object. New York: Praeger. 1973.
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