Issue Nineteen

2014

Creating Society Between People

Control Issue Nineteen presents a group of artists who are all developing a counter consciousness opposed to the possessive object, though in quite different ways, however they are all focussing their work on creating society between people. Here the artwork becomes a dynamic social process through a single event or a time-based series of events, which are even taken to the level of a simulation of a possible society or social state of affairs. As such the artists’ practices presented in this issue of Control Magazine provide the reader with a contemporary counter view to the current art world culture of the deterministic, authoritative and possessive object. Despite the overwhelming emphasis and preoccupation with the market in today’s visual culture, with its emulative icons of life-style art objects, the artists in Issue Nineteen have created a space in which they can operate and express the quite different values of community. In the present climate this has to be quite a significant achievement as all the validating reinforcements in the art environment are currently hugely biased towards art that is descriptive, that reinforces the beliefs, values and practices of the dominant culture. Some of the artists here are in a network of mutual support that has aided and helped validate the approaches they have taken, and this is undoubtedly a significant action on their part, others have gone ahead with their projects in semi isolation from like minded colleagues; but in both cases this issue of Control Magazine has brought together, in one overall statement, an access to some of the socially-founded art practices of the moment.

Contributors

• Christian Nyampeta The Rest
• Rosalie Schweiker Dilemmas in Art
• Ricardo Basbaum re-projecting (London)
• Andrea Francke On how art should help us imagine different futures and how art discourse could be stopping us from getting there
• Emma Smith Rehearsal
• Stephen Willats The Oxford Community Datastream
• Eva Weinmayr Wear Your Heart On Your Sleeve
• Ross Taylor & Madalina Zaharia Walls With Holes In
• Luke Cohen Charivari
• Laura Wilson 800 Lights in 177 Years